Hold Me Now
by CharmedBec
Summary: The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever win it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer... AU as of Lucy's birth in Season 5.
1. Regrets

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever win it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Well, here it is. The first chapter of my new story _*eek*_ Hope you like!

This was inspired by an article that I read ages ago in the CSI magazine over here in the UK. The main interview was with Anna Belknap, but there was a short insert with Carmine Giovinazzo where he was talking about Danny and Lindsay getting married and how it would be interesting to play whichever way it turned out. I can't remember the exact words he used, but he said something along the lines of how he thought Danny needed someone like Lindsay in his life to provide some balance, but then went on to say that if they decided that they couldn't make it work for any reason that it would lead to a complicated situation…

D/L but also D/O in parts because it's necessary to the story. There's some adult talk & situations in this. Nothing too graphic but please bear in mind the rating. AU as of Lucy's birth in Season 5.

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 1 – Regrets**_

_**New York, September 2013…**_

"Mommy, Mommy, I can't find Molly!"

Already prepared for her daughter's plaintive cry, Lindsay Monroe reached out and picked up the small stuffed rabbit that sat waiting patiently on the kitchen counter behind her. Fed up with its grubby and matted state, she had filched the toy from her little girl's pillow the night before and had put it through the wash while she slept. Now pristine and gleaming, the stuffed bunny looked much the same as it had the day Danny had brought it home some three years earlier.

"You found her!" Four year old Lucy Messer snatched the toy from her mother's hand in delight, and then proceeded to cram it headfirst into the small backpack that she carried. "What time's Daddy picking me up?" she asked.

Lindsay glanced at her watch. "In about ten minutes. Have you got everything?"

Lucy nodded and then looked up at Lindsay with her father's familiar blue eyes. "Am I staying at Daddy's all weekend?" she asked. "Till Monday?"

"All weekend," Lindsay confirmed with a nod.

"Will Rachel be there?"

Lindsay's stomach lurched at the mention of Danny's girlfriend. She knelt down in front of Lucy to fasten the buckle on her backpack. "I don't know," she said. "I expect so. Is that a problem? I thought you liked her."

"I do," Lucy told her mother seriously, "But I like it when it's just Daddy and me best."

Lindsay sighed and drew her daughter into a hug. Lucy returned the embrace with a young child's natural exuberance, wrapping her arms around her mother's neck and squeezing tightly. As she cuddled her little girl close, Lindsay pondered miserably over the personal quandary that she had unexpectedly found herself in.

It was ironic really – she'd been the one to end their three year marriage and yet it was Danny who was now moving on with his life. In contrast, Lindsay was left struggling with her lingering regret. She wished now that she hadn't been so quick to throw the towel in on their faltering relationship, but, at the time, she'd been so sure that she was making the right decision.

Danny had begged her to reconsider, but she'd stubbornly stood her ground, utterly convinced that making a quick, clean break from an increasingly intolerable situation was the best thing for all of them in the long run. After six months of almost constant sniping, her emotional defences had been at rock-bottom. The incident at Sullivan's had simply been the last straw. It didn't matter how many times her husband had sworn that there'd been nothing in it, she hadn't been able to shake the feeling that he was lying to her. Because of that, what was left of the fragile trust between them had crumbled to dust at their feet.

Once Danny realised that she wasn't going to change her mind, bitter anger had set in and their split had become progressively more acrimonious as a result. It was Lucy who had pulled them back from the brink in the end. Lindsay would never forget that day as long as she lived. She and Danny had been locked in an utterly pointless dispute about who would pick up Lucy from day-care the next day, when the then three year old's broken-hearted sobs had reached their ears. United in their concern for their adored daughter, they'd hurried through into the adjoining bedroom. The sight of her little girl's tear-streaked face would live in Lindsay's memory forever.

"What's wrong, baby?" she had crooned, sitting down on the floor and drawing the sobbing child into her lap. Danny had knelt down beside her and stroked a gentle hand over their daughter's honey-blonde hair. Lucy's tear-filled eyes had lifted at her father's tender touch. "Why don't you like Mommy anymore, Daddy?" she asked, hiccupping a little as she tried desperately to contain her sobs.

The stricken look on Danny's face had echoed Lindsay's own feelings of guilt. No matter what they were going through personally, Lucy was the most important thing in both their lives. She had to come first, which meant that things had to change. Since that day, they'd strived hard to keep things amicable between them, and, apart from one or two minor hiccups, they'd mostly succeeded in doing so. In fact, Lindsay could almost say that they were something approaching friends again - if it hadn't been for the sense of lost opportunity that grew stronger and more acute inside of her every day.

It was Danny's fledgling relationship with Detective Rachel Havers that had brought her emotional u-turn to a head. The female detective had transferred to New York from the Philadelphia PD thirteen months ago and had been assigned to Flack's precinct. Her easy rapport with Don had quickly made her an integral part of their close-knit team, and she had become a regular visitor to the Lab over the past year or so. At first, Lindsay thought that Rachel and Flack might get together, but it had become apparent at Stella's birthday dinner five months before that the chemistry was sparking in a different direction entirely.

Lindsay couldn't quite believe that she hadn't noticed before, but then she and Danny rarely worked together anymore unless they were part of the wider team. Mac had accepted that their personal issues would affect their work for a time, and had sensitively rearranged their shift patterns to suit. They hardly ever worked the same shift, let alone the same case, giving them the space that they needed to come to terms with the breakdown of their short-lived marriage.

They didn't have much contact socially either. It was only at events such as Stella's birthday that they came together outside of work or their shared monetary and childcare responsibilities. Lindsay's stomach had knotted painfully as she'd watched the flirtatious banter that bounced so effortlessly between her soon-to-be ex-husband and the new girl from Philly. They were being discreet in deference to her presence, but, given her profession, Lindsay was anything but unobservant when it came to the subtle nuances of human interaction.

At one point, Danny had glanced across the table at her and she'd seen in his familiar blue-eyed gaze the answer to the question that she hadn't wanted to ask. The verbal confirmation had come from his lips just a week later and Lindsay had been shocked to learn that her heart could still break. After he'd left that night, the floodgates had finally opened and all the pain and hurt that she'd kept bottled up inside for months had poured out of her in a tidal-wave of grief.

She'd been struggling to come to terms with those feelings ever since. To make matters worse, Danny's relationship with Rachel had gone from relatively casual to pretty serious in a few short months, culminating in the introduction of his new girlfriend to his daughter a few weeks before. While Lucy had accepted the situation with equanimity, it remained a mixed bag of emotions for her confused and increasingly vulnerable mother.

Rachel was nice; that was half the trouble. Under different circumstances, Lindsay could easily have envisaged the two of them becoming friends. The young detective had a strong work ethic, could hold an intelligent conversation and was also blessed with a good sense of humour. Physically, she was everything that Lindsay felt she wasn't. Her lithe and well-proportioned figure was accentuated perfectly by the clothing she wore, while her colouring was particularly striking - burnished red hair that fell in a smooth, sleek curtain to her shoulders and green eyes that were large and luminous in the pale rose of her face.

In fact, she fit Lindsay's in-built idea of Danny's perfect woman to a 'T'. That wasn't the worst of it though. She hated the way Danny looked at the beautiful red-head with both desire and laughter shining in his blue eyes. It was the same way he used to look at her when their relationship was still fresh and new. The two of them used to have so much fun together – how had they managed to get so dragged down by domestic concerns?

In hindsight, she could see that they'd let things slide after Lucy was born. They'd forgotten to take the time to enjoy being newly-weds as well as first-time parents. Their focus had been entirely on their tiny daughter and they'd neglected their relationship as a result. It could have all been so different, but what was done was done and there was no going back now, however much Lindsay might wish they could.

The anticipated ring of the doorbell came then, prompting Lucy to pull out of Lindsay's embrace with an enthusiastic squeal. The little girl scurried to the door and bounced up and down in excitement as she waited for her Mom to open the door and admit her beloved father. The moment he stepped over the threshold, she launched herself at him like a flying missile, her pigtails flying in her tailwind.

"Daddy!"

"Hey pumpkin! How ya doin'?" Danny Messer swung his small daughter up into his arms and planted a sound kiss on her rosebud lips.

While the excited little girl twined her arms tightly around his neck, he looked past her to Lindsay. "Hey!"

"Hey!" Lindsay replied in subdued tones.

Danny's blue eyes narrowed at her lack of animation. "You ok?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine." Lindsay looked away and swallowed the lump in her throat. She busied herself gathering Lucy's things. "I think I packed everything but if you need anything else you can always come by to pick it up over the weekend. You still got your key?"

Danny nodded as he took the duffle-bag and Lucy's backpack from her. "Sure." He hesitated for a moment, looked like he was going to say something and then obviously decided against it because he turned back to his daughter instead. "Shall we go then, sweetheart?"

Lucy nodded enthusiastically and then reached out her arms to her mother. "Bye Mommy!"

Taking her daughter's little face between her palms, Lindsay kissed her. "Bye sweetie. Be good, 'kay?"

"I will," Lucy promised her solemnly.

"You'll drop her off at day-care on Monday?" Lindsay asked as she drew back.

Danny nodded. "Yeah. I'll bring her stuff back here on the way to work if you like."

Lindsay forced a smile. "Thanks."

"Oh, I almost forget. Can you get down for a minute, peanut?" Danny set his daughter back down on her feet and reached into his jacket pocket. He withdrew a cheque and handed it to Lindsay. "You've gotta pay this month's day-care fees this week, right?"

Lindsay nodded. "Yes, thanks."

She looked down at the cheque in her hands. Is this what they were now reduced to? Childcare agreements and maintenance cheques? Quite suddenly, a wave of acute loneliness crashed over her. She missed her husband, she couldn't help it. She missed his good-natured teasing, the feel of his strong arms around her, everything about him in fact. Her eyes welled, threatened to spill, but she forcibly stemmed the flow. She'd forfeited her right to his love fifteen months ago. He'd asked, no begged her to give their marriage another chance but she'd refused him. She couldn't wish him back now. It wasn't fair. She'd missed the boat, let fear rule her heart and lost the man she loved.

She blinked back the tears and knelt to kiss her daughter a second time. "I love you. I'll see you Monday, okay?"

"Okay. I love you too, Mommy," Lucy said as she slipped her small hand into her father's larger one. "Come on, Daddy," she said, tugging impatiently on his fingers.

Hefting the duffle-bag on his shoulder, Danny nodded his goodbyes at Lindsay and then followed his daughter to the door.

"Are we going to ride the subway or Uncle Flack's police car?" Lindsay heard Lucy ask as she closed the door behind them. Danny's reply was a low, intelligible murmur that she couldn't quite catch. Staying where she was, she listened as the sound of their footsteps faded into the distance, then turned, leaned her head back against the door and let the tears flow.

**OOOOOO**

_**Later that night…**_

"And they all lived happily ever after."

Danny closed the book and smiled over at his slumbering daughter, who had lost her valiant battle to stay awake a few minutes earlier. Setting the book aside, he tucked her in, dimmed her night-light and then went through into the living room and on into the off-shot kitchen. His cell phone buzzed as he pulled a bottled beer from the fridge and took a long swallow of the amber liquid.

"Messer?"

"Hey!" His girlfriend's low throaty voice sounded pleasantly in his ear.

"Hey – you finished your shift?"

"Yep, just leaving. Is it ok if I come over?"

He took another swallow of his drink before replying. "Sure."

"Did you talk to Lindsay?"

Danny shook his head before realising that she couldn't see him. "No, it wasn't the right time."

"Okay," Rachel said easily. "Shall I pick up pizza on the way over?"

"Sounds good. Did they arrest Marshall by the way?"

"Yeah, arrogant bastard - swaggered in here like he owned the joint so sure his lawyer would get him off. He wasn't so confident when Flack had finished with him though. Your forensic evidence stitched him up real good."

Danny laughed at her terminology. "I think you mean it proved his guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt," he said.

Rachel laughed also. "Well yeah, that too," she agreed. "Look – I'll see you in about thirty minutes, all right?"

"Ok. See ya then."

He shut off his cell and went back into the lounge. Settling comfortably on the couch, he glanced around the room until his eyes settled on the pool table. The sigh that escaped his lips was bittersweet as he recalled the phone-call from his lawyer that morning.

"They've set the date for the final divorce hearing, Danny," Matt Clemens had told him. "Fifth of next month."

His lawyer had proceeded to tell him that he thought Lindsay's lawyer was currently on vacation so it was unlikely that she knew yet. Knowing that it was an event that needed acknowledging, Danny had intended to mention it to her today when he picked up Lucy for the weekend. One look at Lindsay's face though and he'd desisted. There'd been such sadness in her eyes and, although she'd tried to hide it, he knew her well enough to know that she'd been on the verge of tears as well.

He wasn't blind or stupid. He'd recognised that Lindsay had been growing increasingly emotionally fragile over the past few months. What he didn't understand was why, probably because he'd chosen not to ask. Instead, he'd tamped down his innate concern for her because he didn't feel that it was his place to interfere. She was the mother of his child and would always be part of his life because of that, but that was as far as their relationship went now. He was no longer her husband; he wasn't even sure that he was her friend anymore. Apart from Lucy, they lived virtually separate lives. It was the way Lindsay wanted it, and it was easier and less emotionally draining simply not to argue with her and just accept it as the way things had to be.

He still couldn't quite believe how quickly their marriage had disintegrated. For over two years, they'd been happy and then the arguments had started. At first, they'd been over small, petty things and he hadn't been too worried. They'd hit a bit of a rough patch, that was all. They'd get through it like they had before. But things had rapidly escalated. Next thing he knew, she'd started questioning him about where he was when he wasn't with her. Where had he been? Who had he been with? What time would he be home? It had pissed him off even though he could understand her mistrust.

The plain fact of the matter was that he had cheated on her once. It had been before they were married and the biggest regret of his life, but he had betrayed her, had messed up big time, and now he didn't feel like he had any solid ground to stand on when she accused him. They should have talked honestly about it. They should have confronted the issue they'd buried since before Lindsay had fallen pregnant and dealt with it once and for all. Instead, he'd stupidly said nothing and hoped that his reassurances would be enough. They hadn't been. That night at Sullivan's had been ample proof of that.

He'd tried, he really had, but she'd shut him out completely after that night. The walls that she'd put up around him twice before – once before Daniel Kadem's trial and secondly, after his indiscretion with Rikki Sandoval - were back and this time proved impenetrable. When he pushed, Lindsay closed herself off even more and Lucy inevitably got caught in the cross-fire. He couldn't stand to watch his beloved daughter in distress, so it was with a reluctant heart that he'd finally given in and capitulated to his wife's demands for a legal separation.

Moving on had been hard, but Rachel had been like a breath of fresh air in recent months. Easy-going, fun and sexy, she buoyed his confidence and made him believe in himself again. Their relationship was going well. There was still Lucy to consider however, so they were taking things slowly for now. Once the divorce was finalised, maybe the time would be right for more, but, right now, they were simply having fun and getting to know each other better.

He heard the scrape of the lock and looked up with a smile as Rachel came into the apartment using the key that he'd given her only a few weeks before. "Hey!" he greeted her. "That didn't take long."

His girlfriend smiled as she dumped the takeout boxes on the small table by the door and shrugged out of her coat. "I called the order in from the precinct," she told him. "Lucy asleep?" she asked as she crossed the room to sit down beside him on the couch.

"Hmm," Danny replied, lazily arching his neck as she leaned forward to nuzzle her lips against his throat. Snaking a warm hand under his t-shirt, she placed a series of biting kisses up over his chin to his mouth, her intent clear.

"The pizza'll get cold," he murmured against her lips when they finally reached his.

Rachel smiled into their kiss. "I like cold pizza."

He chuckled. "Is that right?"

"Mm-Mm."

He gave in. "All right, but not here, 'kay? Lucy might wake up."

"You've got a lock on your bedroom door, right?" Rachel asked as she stood up, held out her hands and pulled him to his feet.

"Wouldn't be without one, babe," he replied as he followed her down the hall and through into the adjoining bedroom…

**OOOOOO**

Lindsay wrenched open the bottom drawer of the dresser and began to rifle through its contents. She knew she'd put it in here somewhere…

Reaching right to the back, her hand closed over an unfamiliar oblong object, a leather case if she was not much mistaken. Frowning, she withdrew the box and felt her heart constrict when she belatedly realised what it was. Rising to her feet, she stumbled backwards and sank down on the edge of the bed, the box cupped reverently in her hands. Flipping the lid, she looked inside and traced the outline of the object with her forefinger.

It was a watch – a man's watch. She'd bought it for Danny fifteen months before, intending to give it to him on his forthcoming birthday. Silent tears coursed down her cheeks as she recalled why she'd bought it on that particular day –weeks before the actual event and ironically on the day that their marriage had essentially ended for good. It was meant as an avowal to herself - and to him - that things would get better, that she would make the effort and try to beat her demons as he'd asked.

For what must have been the thousandth time now, she wondered where they'd be today if that night at Sullivan's had turned out differently. If it had turned out how she'd planned, how she'd hoped. If she'd not spectacularly over-reacted to the situation and instead listened to what her husband had to say.

Because she had over-reacted, she knew that now. Danny had been telling her truth. A truth that she hadn't been able to hear because all she could think of, all she could see, was another time, another place, another woman…

All the residual fight going out of her, Lindsay curled up into a foetal position atop the bedclothes, clutched the leather box to her chest and wept for the love that she'd thrown away in a fit of jealousy and distrust.

**OOOOOO**

Much later that night, Danny slipped from the bed, crossed to the window and looked out. The moon was high in the sky, giving the night an ethereal glow in spite of the warmer light from the street-lamps outside. He drew in a deep breath and then looked back at the woman sleeping in the bed behind him. Her red hair was bleached black by the darkness and scattered haphazardly across the pillows. Her left arm hugged the sheets to her breasts, while her skin was still glowing from their lovemaking.

Tip-toeing out the bedroom, he crossed the hall and peeked in on his daughter. She looked so much like her Mom when she slept. Her eyes were his but the rest of her features were pure Lindsay. Starting with that first night on his pool table, he'd woken up to the adult version of that face for more times than he could remember. It made him sad to think that he never would again.

So many regrets. Might it have all turned out differently if not for a few twists of fate? Or were they doomed from the start? He hoped not, he didn't want to believe that. He remembered what Mac had said to him the day before his and Lindsay's wedding:

_You can live your life in__ a place of fear or you can believe in the best version of yourself._

He'd wanted to believe in the best version of himself, he _had_ believed in it. It was Lindsay who hadn't in the end. He sighed and wandered through into the living room, too restless to go back to bed and try to sleep. Spotting his cell on the arm of the sofa, he picked it up and on impulse selected speed-dial 1 – he never had changed it…

**OOOOOO**

Lindsay startled into wakefulness as her cell buzzed on her nightstand. Seeing who was calling immediately set her heart to racing. "Lucy?" she asked breathlessly as she answered the phone.

She heard Danny curse under his breath. "She's fine. She's asleep. I'm sorry; I didn't think."

Lindsay collapsed back against the pillows in relief. "It's the middle of the night, Danny."

"I know, I know, I'm sorry. I just…" She heard him pause, take a breath. "I had a call from my lawyer this morning."

"Oh?"

"They've set a date."

"For what?" she asked without thinking.

Another pause and then "Linds…"

"Oh," she said when she realised. "Oh."

There was an awkward silence, which was broken by Danny's sudden rush of words.

"I loved you, you know that, right?" he said. "I… before all this is over… I just… I wanted you to know that."

"Danny…" Lindsay's breath hitched in her throat. Loved, past tense. No more than she deserved, she supposed.

"And I'm sorry, you know?" he continued on. "About Rikki, I mean. It was… well, I don't know what it was, but I am sorry. I never really told you that and I should have done. Maybe if I had…"

"Things might have turned out differently?" Lindsay asked bitterly.

"Maybe." Danny's tone was resigned.

Lindsay wearily closed her eyes. "But it didn't, did it?"

Danny sighed. "No, no, it didn't."

Lindsay drew in a shaky breath. "I've gotta go now…"

"Lindsay…"

She cut him off, unable to bear the painful conversation any longer.

**OOOOOO**

"Damn!"

Danny dropped his head back against the couch and closed his eyes. Why was he pushing it? He'd reconciled himself to the failure of his marriage months ago, had moved on with someone new. But now that chapter of his life was finally about to come to a permanent close, he had a sudden need to tie up loose ends. Or maybe it was more basic than that. Lindsay was unhappy, he hadn't fully realised that until today. And, despite everything, she still mattered. He wanted to help her, be the friend she so obviously needed right now, the friend he used to be before everything had fallen apart.

"Danny?"

He turned at the sound of Rachel's voice.

"Are you ok?" she asked.

"I'm fine," he replied, shrugged. "Couldn't sleep."

She held out her hand to him. "Come back to bed."

He rejoined her in the bedroom, curling his arm about her shoulder when she lay her head down on his chest. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked, her fingers absently tracing the intricate pattern of the tattoo on his upper arm.

He almost laughed at the irony. "Should have done that a long time ago," he muttered.

"Huh?"

He shook his head. "Never mind. Go back to sleep."

She sighed and snuggled closer. "I'm here if you want to talk. Remember that, okay?"

He kissed her hair. "I will," he promised then closed his eyes, listening as her breathing lengthened and sleep once more claimed her for its own.

'The trouble is,' he thought tiredly to himself. 'I don't know what more there is to say…'

_**To be continued…**_

**OOOOOO**

**A/N2:** _I initially wasn't sure about posting this story as it's very similar in premise to my other D/L story 'What Might Have Been.' However, with the addition of Lucy into the mix and the direction I'm planning to take it in later chapters, I think it's turning out different enough to be a fresh take on the Danny/Lindsay relationship and how they did/didn't deal with the Rikki situation._

_Anyhow, let me know what you think._

_CharmedBec x_


	2. Letting Go

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Wow! I caused something of a stir with this one, didn't I? I warned you at the end of 'What Might Have Been' that it would be angst-ridden! I'm afraid it's going to get worse before it gets better (sorry!). However, this _is_ a D/L story so I hope you will all stick with it.

Anyway, make of that what you will… ;-) I'll leave you to read on…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 2 –**__** Letting Go**_

_**Monday morning**__**, two days later…**_

Danny rang the bell several times but there was no answer. Pulling his key-ring from his pocket, he quickly located the right key and unlocked the door. Stepping inside the quiet apartment, he paused for a moment to take in the familiar surroundings.

He wasn't quite sure why Lindsay had never moved after their separation. At first, she'd stayed because of Lucy. The little girl had endured enough upheaval and neither of them had wanted to unsettle her further by up-rooting her from the only home she'd ever known. Now though, over a year later, Lindsay still remained in the apartment that they'd shared when they'd been married. She'd barely even re-decorated as far as Danny could tell. The place looked much the same as it had done when he'd been living there. The lounge did appear to have been given a fresh coat of paint recently, but it was virtually the same colour as before. He could still remember painting it the first time around…

_**Four years earlier…**_

"_What's wrong with it?" he asked, looking at his wife in exasperation. It seemed perfectly adequate to him._

"_It's green, Danny," she unintelligibly explained as she jigged a fussy __Lucy in her arms._

"_So?"_

"_It __just doesn't work," she told him, "It's got to go; it doesn't fit the space at all."_

"_Right…," he said slowly, not really getting it but playing along__ nonetheless. "So what does then?"_

_Lindsay pursed her lips as she considered his question. "Blush pink," she eventually decided._

"_Pink?" Danny's eyebrows rose. "You want me to paint our apartment pink?"_

"_Blush pink," she corrected,__ "And not the whole apartment, just this room."_

"_The room everyone is gonna see," he pointed out._

_Lindsay rolled her eyes. "Blush pink, Danny," she said impatiently, "Not bubble-gum pink. I promise it won't offend your masculine sensibilities too much. It's 'cream with a hint of warm colour to create a homely effect'" she added, quoting the home-style brochure that she'd picked the colour from. "Think you can handle that, Mr Testosterone?"_

_Danny grinned at her. "I still do__n't see what's wrong with green," he said, his eyes twinkling playfully._

"_Danny!" _

_He laughed. "All right, all right, I'll paint it 'blush pink' if you want, but I get to choose the colour of the bedroom as compensation."_

_Lindsay shook her head in affectionate exasperation. "What are you gonna do when this one's…" She indicated the now sleeping baby in her arms. "Going through her pink phase?" she asked._

_Danny shrugged. "Leave the country until it's over," he quipped__ with a grin._

_Lindsay laughed. "No, you won't. You'd never leave her. She's got you so completely wrapped around her little finger, you'd probably process a crime scene dressed in shocking pink overalls if she asked you to…"_

He'd laughed at the time. Now it didn't seem quite so funny because in some respects he had left Lucy. Not willingly perhaps, but he was no longer part of his daughter's day-to-day life in the same way as he had been before. He saw her regularly enough but it wasn't the same. He was just thankful that Lindsay had never tried to prevent him from seeing his little girl. Even when they'd barely been speaking to each other, she'd always granted him unlimited access to their daughter. He was lucky in that respect, he supposed. In his line of work, he'd seen fathers separated from their children for no other reason than pure spite. He would be eternally grateful that Lindsay hadn't let her anger towards him colour her attitude with respect to his relationship with his baby girl.

A sound from the other room distracted him from his thoughts then, and his hand automatically went to the service weapon holstered at his hip. Drawing the gun, he expertly flipped off the safety and cautiously made his way down the hallway towards the main bedroom at the end. The door was slightly ajar and he drew in a few deep breaths before kicking it fully open and entering the room, his gun braced in front of him at shoulder height.

"NYPD!"

He was met with a shocked scream and a vehement curse escaped his lips in response.

"Jesus Lindsay!" He quickly lowered his gun, his heart hammering like a drumbeat inside his chest at the thought of just how close he'd come to squeezing the trigger.

"What the hell are you doing?" Lindsay demanded, her voice shrill.

"I thought you were an intruder," he said, re-holstering his gun. "I brought Lucy's stuff over like I said I would. Why the hell didn't you answer the door? I must have rung the bell at least three times."

"I was asleep." Lindsay raked her fingers through her hair, her hands still shaking from the shock of having him burst in on her like that. "I took some sleeping pills last night. I guess they knocked me out more than I thought."

"How many pills?" Danny asked, more than a little worried by her sickly appearance. She was pasty white with dark circles bruising the delicate skin under her eyes. She'd also lost weight - something he hadn't noticed before because she dressed so well to hide it. Standing there in her cotton PJs though, there was no mistaking how thin she'd gotten. The loose bottoms of her nightwear were practically hanging off of her, and her hipbones stood out in sharp relief against the pale tan of her skin.

Lindsay shrugged. "I don't know – two or three I guess."

"Lindsay…" He reached out and took her by the shoulders. "What's going on? Look at you." He trailed his fingers along the pronounced ridge of her collarbone and felt her flinch away from his touch as if his hands were on fire. "Are you sick?"

"No, I'm fine." She pulled out of his grasp and wrapped her thin arms protectively around her middle, rocking on her heels a little. "I've just been having some trouble sleeping that's all."

"Lindsay, you are _not_ fine!" Danny insisted. "I know you, okay? Something's wrong. Just tell me, all right?"

To his immense discomfort, her eyes immediately filled with tears. "What good would it do?" she asked, her voice raspy with emotion. "You can't… I can't… It's all my fault."

"What is?"

"Everything! This! Us!"

She gestured wildly between them before spinning away from him to pace agitatedly up and down. Finally letting her guard down, she proceeded to vent everything that was in her heart. "I thought it was the right thing, you know? I didn't want to feel like that anymore. I just wanted it all to stop. I loved you too much and I was afraid that… that… I was so afraid Danny…"

She stopped and heaved in a shaky breath. "I couldn't take you leaving me again so I pushed you away. Better to make the break before you did, I figured. How wrong was I, huh?"

Danny stared at her in shock, stunned by her emotional outburst. "Wh-what are you saying?"

Lindsay shook her head. "Nothing. I'm sorry, I shouldn't… It doesn't matter." She scrubbed her hands over her face. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"

Danny closed his eyes in an effort to bring his scattered wits back under control. "No," he said firmly. "No. You are _not_ going to do this. Not now. Not like this. The divorce is finalised in six weeks, Lindsay! You've had over a year to… to…" He trailed off, unable to continue.

"I know, I know. I said I was sorry, didn't I? Just ignore me, okay? Ignore me…"

Danny blew out a breath to calm himself. "Is this, like… cold feet?" he asked.

Lindsay began to laugh, but her hysterical mirth quickly turned into gut-wrenching sobs. "I should have believed you," she whispered as she valiantly attempted and failed to choke back the tears.

"Yeah, you should have, but it's a little late for regrets now, don't you think?" Danny's voice was hard, unforgiving, and Lindsay's temper flared in spite of her remorse.

"Don't you lay all the blame on me, okay?" she stormed. "You were the one… You were the one…"

"Who slept with someone else?" Danny prompted, frustration making him brutally direct.

"Yes! God dammit! You were the one who slept with someone else when I would have been there for you in a heartbeat. All you had to do was pick up the phone, Danny, so why didn't you? Why did it have to be her? Why wasn't I good enough? Why?"

"It wasn't like that…"

"So what was it like then, huh?" She shoved him in the chest and he stumbled back a step. "Tell me!"

"I don't know! I messed up, okay? I messed up bad. I know that." He sighed. "I wish I could explain it, but I don't think I even know myself why it happened. Not completely. All I knew was that Rikki understood how I felt and you seemed so far away. I needed you, but I had no idea how to reach out to you."

"You knew just how to reach out to her though, didn't you?" Lindsay remarked bitterly.

Danny shook his head in denial. "Not really. It was a band-aid not a cure. We both knew it. We used each other. It didn't get rid of the problem, not by a long shot. It was the biggest mistake of my life, believe me. I just… I don't think I ever fully realised…"

He broke off and brushed a weary hand over his face as he came to the heart-rending conclusion that this was probably the first time that they'd had an open and honest discussion about what had happened after Ruben Sandoval's tragic death. The sad fact of the matter was that it was all too little, too late, however.

"Realised what?" Lindsay pressed, drawing his attention back to their conversation.

Danny sighed. "How I felt about you," he explained. "It was only afterwards when I was faced with the possibility of losing you that it finally registered. I mean I knew I cared about you, but I didn't know that I loved you, not really, not then. I don't think I allowed myself to feel it. Until you, I was the king of the no-strings relationship. You were different, I knew that, but I guess I wasn't ready to accept what that meant. And then Ruben happened and… well, everything went to hell."

"Was it… was it good?" Lindsay asked then. Somehow she needed to know, she couldn't say why.

Danny wrinkled his brow in confusion. "Was what good?" he asked, not understanding her question.

"You and her." She still couldn't bring herself to say the name even after all these years.

"Lindsay, I don't think…"

"I need to know, okay? Don't ask me why. I just do."

Danny thought about it. He'd kind of blanked the whole thing out to be honest. He didn't like himself when he looked back on that night or the following morning. It didn't seem like him and he wanted to distance himself from it.

"It was… desperate," he said. It seemed like the only word to describe it. He couldn't say he hadn't been physically satisfied, but the experience was surprisingly emotionally cold despite the strong feelings that had led to the ill-fated union.

Lindsay nodded. She understood what he was trying to say even if personally it still hurt her. She remembered a period in her own life just after she'd started college when she'd blocked out her own pain with no-strings sex. It hadn't made her feel better and eventually she'd realised that it wasn't the answer to her problems. All it did was add to them.

"Look Lindsay…" Danny reached out to lift her chin so that he could look her directly in the eye. "I look back and I don't recognise who I was that night. It was me, but not me, you know? It was like a stranger with my face doing those things. I don't… that isn't me. It never was."

"So you've never cheated before?" she asked.

"Once – when I was about seventeen and young and stupid. But other than that - no. What happened with Rikki was just bad circumstances. It's not who I am."

"I wish you'd told me this before now," Lindsay said dejectedly.

He leaned his forehead against hers. "We should have talked."

Lindsay's lips twisted into a wry smile. "You think?"

Danny sighed, not knowing what else to say.

"I know it's too late." Lindsay's voice was so quiet he barely heard her. "It's just hard to accept that's all. I look at you with Rachel and I wish things could have been different between us." She drew in a deep breath. "I'm glad you're happy though."

Danny shook his head. "No, you're not."

Lindsay shot him a watery smile in return. "No, I guess not. I want to be though. Maybe some day I will be. Maybe someday I won't feel like I stupidly threw away my best chance at happiness." She sighed. "I'm sorry I didn't trust you when it mattered."

"I'm sorry I ever gave you a reason not to," Danny said with honest regret. "Don't think you weren't good enough. That wasn't it; that was never it. I hate that you've spent so long thinking that."

Lindsay felt the tears pricking at the back of her eyelids again. "I think you should go," she whispered. Giving into impulse, she cupped his face in her hands, kissed him fiercely on the lips, and then turned on her heel and fled into the bathroom.

Trying to shut out the sound of her broken-hearted sobs from the other side of the door, Danny stood rooted to the spot for a moment, absorbing the aftermath of the emotional rollercoaster ride he'd just been on. Finally he turned and quietly left the apartment, knowing that there wasn't anything he could do or say to make things better right now.

**OOOOOO**

_**Sullivan's, the following evening…**_

"Whoa!" Don Flack sat back against the wooden bench and regarded his friend from across the table.

"Well, that about covers it," Danny replied, taking a sip from his shot-glass before setting it back down on the pitted table in front of him.

Flack shook his head. "So…" he said slowly. "Have you mentioned any of this to Rachel?"

Danny's eyebrows rose. "What do you think?" he said. "I mean she's been great about Lucy and the divorce and everything, but this might be pushing it a bit far…"

"It's not like Lindsay's the type to do anything though."

Danny's forehead creased in confusion. "Do anything?" he queried.

"You know… break into your apartment, strip naked and wait for you to get home… or somethin'"

Danny's lips curled up at the corners at the frankly ludicrous scenario. He couldn't ever imagine Lindsay doing anything so sleazy and underhand. "No," he agreed. "She'd want me to go to her. To make that choice for myself. She'd still need that reassurance from me even now."

"And are you going to?" Flack asked. "Go to her, I mean?"

"Honestly?" Danny pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger in agitation. "I don't know. I mean, no… I…" He stopped and sighed. "It's not like I don't feel… It's just… I think there's too much water under the bridge for that."

"You'd get to be a full-time Dad to Lucy again," Flack pointed out.

Danny nodded. "Which is a definite plus, but it's not a reason to stay married to somebody, Don. Marriage is tough. It takes a lot of hard work and you have to want it, _really_ want it, and I'm just not sure I do anymore. A year ago it was a different story but now…" He shrugged. "I don't know and I have to be sure because I could never put Lucy through that again. Thankfully, she seems to have handled our split ok. A second time around might be a whole lot more damaging to her though."

"And there's Rachel to consider, of course."

Danny sighed. "Yeah, there's Rachel…"

"Do you love her?"

Danny thought about that. "It's a little early for the kind of love that I had with Lindsay, but yeah, I'm in love with her. She makes me feel good, and, well, it's easy, you know? Relaxed; nothing too heavy. I enjoy being with her and that's enough for now."

"And Lindsay?" Flack asked.

"What about her?"

"How do you feel about her?"

Danny took another sip of his drink before replying. "It's complicated."

"No kidding!" Don remarked wryly.

Danny smiled in spite of himself. "At the time, I really felt for her. She was genuinely upset and… well, I'm partly responsible for that, aren't I? But then afterwards, when I got home and I started thinking about it some more, it made me angry too. I mean, why couldn't she have figured all this out a year ago? Back then, I would have given anything to make things right, but she blocked me out, shut me down. I don't know, Don, it's like, me and Lindsay, we've always had such great potential, but, right from the beginning, we've never managed to be on the same page at the same time. I don't know whether that's just karma, fate trying to tell us something or what. As I said, it's complicated."

"But something that's not completely dead and buried, obviously."

"No, but I'm tired of all the drama, Flack. Why does it have to be such hard work all the time, huh? It's so easy with Rachel, but does that mean it's right? I don't know; I really don't."

"I guess all you can do is be honest with yourself - and them - and see how it plays out."

Danny nodded solemnly, and then voiced the main reason he'd asked Flack to meet him that night. "Anyway, enough of that, I need you to do something for me…"

**OOOOOO**

_**New York Crime Lab, **__**the next day…**_

"Turkey salad on rye. Skinny Latte. Oh and a free double choc-chip cookie for after."

Lindsay looked up as Don Flack reached over her shoulder and placed a paper food bag from the deli across the street on her desk.

"Lunch," he explained as he sat down in the chair opposite her and began to unwrap the meatball sub he'd gotten for himself.

"Yes, I can see that," Lindsay replied. "There's just one thing – I don't remember ordering it."

"You gotta eat," Don told her around a mouthful of sandwich. "Don't want you collapsing from malnutrition now, do we?"

Lindsay's eyes narrowed at that. "Did Danny ask you to do this?"

"Danny who?" Flack enquired innocently.

"Don!"

Flack shrugged. "He's worried about you, and I can see why – you're all skin and bones, Linds."

Lindsay felt the tears threaten to rise and quickly tamped them down, irritated at herself for being so damn emotional all the time. "He doesn't have to do that. I'm not his responsibility anymore."

"That doesn't mean he doesn't care," Flack told her, serious now.

"I wish he wouldn't."

"Really?" Don's eyebrows rose in disbelief at that.

Lindsay looked down at her desk and began to unwrap her sandwich in order to give her hands something to do. "He told you what happened," she stated rather than asked.

"Yeah."

Lindsay flushed in discomfiture. "Okay so now I'm even more humiliated than I was already," she remarked.

Don sighed. "You pitched him one hell of a curve ball, Linds. What did you expect him to do with it?"

"Nothing! Nothing, ok? You needn't worry about me getting in between him and Rachel if that's what you're bothered about."

"Why would I be bothered about that?"

"Because she's your friend."

"And you're not?" Flack asked bluntly. Lindsay bit her bottom lip and looked away, touched by the implication in his words.

"All of you are my friends, Linds. I'm not taking sides here. You've gotta work this thing out for yourselves. But, if you need someone to talk to then I'm here, okay?"

"And what would Ellen say to that?" Lindsay asked, referring to his girlfriend of the last four months.

"Nothing, she trusts me."

Lindsay nodded and looked down at her hands. For Don and Ellen, it really was as simple as that. For her and Danny, it had been so much more complicated. Trust was a commodity that had been shattered and never completely rebuilt. Ironically, now that she was finally ready to trust him again, it was too late.

Sensing her disquiet and guessing the reason behind it, Flack reached out and placed his hand over hers. "I know about Rikki Sandoval, you know," he said, lightly squeezing her fingers.

"Danny told you?" Lindsay lifted her gaze to look at him in astonishment. She knew Danny and he were close friends, but she could imagine Don's response to that particular revelation.

"Well, not at the time obviously," Flack told her, "Or he might not have remained quite so pretty…"

Lindsay shot him a small smile, appreciating the sentiment.

"He confessed the whole story that night at Sullivan's," Don went on. "Your reaction – well, it seemed a little off the scale, you know? But Danny just accepted it. I thought he'd be seriously pissed off, but he was more sad than mad." He paused and studied Lindsay carefully. "You do know there was nothing in that, don't you? He messed up before, but he'd learned his lesson, Linds."

"I know," Lindsay said. "Well, at least I do now. At the time, I guess I just imploded. I'd had this ticking time bomb inside of me for years and that night it finally detonated. It's taken until now for the dust to settle and me to see straight again." She sighed. "Except now there's nothing left but ashes."

Flack didn't contradict her. From his conversation with his friend the previous evening, he knew that her marriage wasn't quite as dead in the water as she thought. Right now though, he didn't know whether Danny was going to let it sink to the bottom of the ocean, or mount an eleventh hour rescue mission. Because of that, he thought it best not to give Lindsay false hope at this juncture.

Last night, Danny had asked him to keep an eye on her, to make sure she ate properly and took better care of herself. He was convinced that his estranged wife would take offence at his unasked for interference in her life. Flack wasn't so certain about that, but he was willing to offer his support in lieu of Danny's for the time being.

He patted her hand. "Eat," he urged, picking up and handing her the sandwich he'd brought her.

Despite the fact that she wasn't really hungry, Lindsay obediently lifted the sandwich to her lips and took a bite. "Satisfied?"

"Not yet, but it's a start."

**OOOOOO**

"Danny?"

Mac Taylor poked his head around his office door as the younger CSI walked past and beckoned him inside.

"Yes, boss?"

Mac handed him a printout. "We've got a DB out in Washington Heights. I need you to take it."

"Sure." Danny nodded, and then looked at his boss expectantly, clued in by the uncharacteristic hesitation in Mac's tone. "So what's the catch?"

Mac sighed. "It's like Grand Central Station in here today – everyone else is out at a scene or in court except for you… and Lindsay."

"This case is going to take two, huh?" Danny surmised as he perused the contents of the printout Mac had given him.

"You ok with that?"

"We'll be fine, Mac," Danny assured him.

"All right, but if it comes to the point where it's not fine, you let me know ok?"

"Okay," Danny agreed.

"There's one more thing…"

Danny experienced a sudden sense of foreboding. "Why do I get the feeling I'm not going to like this?" he said.

"The detective on the case…"

With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Danny guessed what Mac was going to say before he said it. "Rachel," he said with resignation.

"Rachel," his boss confirmed.

_**To be continued…**_


	3. A State Of Emergency

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi! This is a bit of a treat (I hope!). I wouldn't normally update quite so quickly – it usually takes me around a week to a week-and-a-half to put a new chapter together. However, I already had a head-start with this story before I began to post it, plus my muse has been working overtime for the last few days so I've decided to put this up now.

Brace yourselves though – it's something of a rollercoaster ride…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 3 –**__** A State of Emergency**_

The silence in the car was so thick you could have cut it with a knife. They'd almost made it to the crime scene before Lindsay's accusing voice finally sliced through the stifling fog of tension between them.

"Why did you tell Mac we would do this without checking with me first?" she demanded petulantly. "Do you have any idea of the kind of position you put me in? I could hardly say no when you'd already told him everything would be fine, could I?"

Tightening his grip on the steering wheel, Danny immediately went on the defensive. "I'm sorry; I didn't think it'd be such a big deal."

"Well, you thought wrong, didn't you?"

"Clearly."

The sarcasm was rife in Danny's tone, but this was mostly ignored by his companion. Lindsay was on a roll and nothing was going to break her stride.

"And I don't know how you could think that anyway," she continued with her tirade. "Weren't you listening to me the other day? Why would you think I'd be comfortable working in a cosy threesome with you and your new play-mate?"

"I didn't know Rachel was the detective on the case when I agreed to us working together," Danny retorted, beyond irritated now. "Or I might have thought twice about it. That's beside the point anyway. Mac can't keep us apart forever, can he? He's been more than accommodating of our situation, but we can't ask him to compromise the efficiency of the department indefinitely. We were the only two CSIs available, Lindsay. What was he supposed to do? Call Stella in on her day off because we can't manage to put our personal issues aside for a few hours?"

Knowing he was right, Lindsay sighed, her mood swinging from apoplectic anger to resigned misery in the blink of an eye. She wiped at the tears that had risen unbidden to her eyes with the tips of her fingers, taking care not to smear her make-up as she did so. "I know, I just… I wasn't ready for this yet…" Her voice broke. "It's still too hard, Danny. I know it shouldn't be, but it is."

"Look, I'll handle the liaison with Rachel," Danny said soothingly as they reached their intended destination. "You just concentrate on processing the scene."

After retrieving their kits from the trunk of the car, they strode towards the apartment block and quickly mounted the short flight of steps, entering the building by way of the heavy revolving door. A trio of uniformed cops immediately stepped forward at their entrance, but a flash of their badges got them to where they needed to be.

"Third floor, apartment number 3F," the eldest of the three officers told them as they headed for the elevator. "Prepare yourselves; it's not a pretty sight, a regular blood-bath apparently."

"Just the way we like 'em," Danny quipped with understated black humour, earning himself a tight grin and an unprintable observation about CSIs and their supposed predilections.

"What?" he asked innocently, as the doors closed behind them and the elevator began to ascend with a jerky movement.

Lindsay refused to smile even though her lips were twitching ominously. "You just can't help yourself, can you?" she remarked dryly.

Danny shrugged. "I figured the mood could use a little lightening."

His blue eyes twinkled at her and the smile broke free in spite of her best efforts to contain it. "And that was your idea of lifting the mood, huh?"

"It worked, didn't it?"

"Temporarily," Lindsay conceded with an incline of her head. "Until those elevator doors open again."

She sighed heavily as that moment inevitably arrived. Squaring her shoulders resolutely, she gathered the last reserves of her emotional strength as the elevator pinged and the thick metal doors swished open. Danny stepped out of the elevator first, Lindsay following closely on his heels, and they walked together down the corridor towards the ubiquitous yellow tape that marked the outer perimeter of their crime scene.

Another uniformed officer indicated their approach to Rachel, who was standing talking to a young woman wrapped in a blanket. She turned to greet them, her official notebook in hand. Danny had to give her credit, her expression barely changed as she registered the identities of the two CSIs coming towards her. The only indication of her unease was an almost imperceptible widening of her luminescent green eyes.

"Hey!" she said in her throaty voice as they ducked under the tape.

"Through there, right?" Lindsay cut in before she could continue any further. At Rachel's nod of affirmation, she side-stepped the red-haired detective and proceeded into the apartment, leaving Danny behind to gather the relevant information from their colleague.

"Okay," Rachel said, drawing out the syllables of the word for emphasis. "And that _so_ isn't going to be awkward. Much."

Danny's lips quirked up into a small smile at the wry comment. "It's not ideal, I know, but it was bound to happen some time."

Rachel nodded. "Your ex is absolutely thrilled at the prospect, I see," she remarked.

"She's a bit wound up right now," Danny conceded, "But she'll get over it. She's not the type to be unprofessional. We've got to find a way to work with each other at some point, Rachel. I can't cut Lindsay out of my life for good. She's Lucy's Mom and we agreed that we'd do what was best for our little girl no matter what. If either of us worked anywhere else…"

"You wouldn't get to see your daughter so regularly," Rachel cut in. "I get it, Danny, I do. I know how much you love that little girl, and from all accounts, Lindsay's a great Mom too."

Danny smiled at that. "One of the best," he concurred.

Rachel ignored the bolt of envy that ran through her at that heartfelt sentiment. On that score, she knew she couldn't compete. Maybe in the future… She shook her head; it was way too early to be thinking like that. Slow and steady, that's what they'd agreed. For Lucy's sake and, she suspected, also for Danny's. He'd just emerged from the shattered debris of a painful marriage break-up, and she knew that he was wary of entering into another serious relationship so soon. She was wary herself. She wasn't exactly the other woman, but she came perilously close. He wasn't even legally divorced yet. Nice and easy was the most sensible course of action for all concerned in her opinion.

"Look, I knew you came with baggage when I first started seeing you, Danny," she told him. "It'd be kind of hypocritical of me to start making an issue of it now. You've never been anything but honest with me about your priorities in life. If Lindsay can be professional about this then so can I."

Danny reached out and lightly squeezed her shoulder in gratitude. "Thanks, babe. Look, I told Lindsay I'd deal with you…" He stopped as Rachel's eyebrows rose. "Sorry, poor choice of words. I just thought it'd be easier on you both if I… err…umm…"

Rachel laughed as he frowned in consternation. "Dealt with me?" she suggested brightly.

Danny grinned, relieved at her good humour. "Yeah."

She leaned in towards him so nobody could overhear. "Honey, you can 'deal' with me anytime you want," she murmured quietly then stepped back.

"So, how about I tell you what I've discovered so far," she said in a business-like tone.

**OOOOOO**

When Lindsay stepped over the threshold into the blood-spattered bedroom, she momentarily forgot her current woes and was instantly catapulted back to the night that would probably always remain the worst of her life. Their Vic had been stabbed rather than shot like her friends, but the sight – and the smell – of all that congealing blood was enough to cause her stomach to turn over and her vision to blur nevertheless.

She closed her eyes to steady herself, knowing that the moment would pass if she focused and allowed her training to take over. Sure enough when she opened her eyes again, she was able to survey the scene with an objective eye. She decided to leave the body for Danny to process and concentrate her efforts on the other evidence instead. Snapping on a pair of latex gloves, she lifted her camera and proceeded to take a series of orientating snapshots of their scene – the blood-streaked walls, the rumpled bedclothes, as well as the various other signs of their victim's desperate struggle for life.

Attacked in her own home by someone she knew, Lindsay quickly surmised from her cursory examination of the scene. Stepping carefully around the body, she moved towards the bed and experienced another emotional jolt – from a different source this time. It always got to her, she couldn't help it. Reaching out with a gloved hand, she picked up the silver photo-frame from the nightstand. The little girl sitting on their victim's lap and beaming into the camera was about three or four years of age. Her dark hair was in pigtails and her attention-grabbing eyes were a gorgeous sapphire-blue colour. The family resemblance to their Vic was obvious from the shared colouring and similar facial features.

"Niece?"

Lindsay jumped at the sound of Danny's voice behind her. She hadn't heard his approach. She shook her head. Something about the way their Vic's arms were cradling the little girl said mother to her. She couldn't say how she knew, she just did. Following her instincts, she turned and moved out of the bedroom searching for the evidence that would confirm her theory.

"Lindsay…"

She pushed open the door to the left, discovered a bathroom and retreated. Moving across the hallway, she opened the other door to find an empty box-room, devoid of all decoration or furniture.

"Lindsay?"

Danny touched her shoulder and she turned to look at him. "She doesn't have kids. None of the neighbours interviewed mentioned a daughter."

"But…" Lindsay looked down at the photograph in her hands, then back at the empty room that seemed to be waiting for something or someone. Being a mother herself, she was sensitive to the signs of it in others. "There's something here, Danny," she insisted. "I know it."

"So bag it and tag it and do some research when we get back to the Lab," Danny advised her matter-of-factly, knowing it was the best way to snap her out of it. "The body's mine, I take it?" he continued, not allowing her any more time to dwell on it.

Lindsay nodded, and then watched his retreating form as he strode purposefully towards the bedroom. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Rachel talking quietly with her fellow officers just inside the doorway of the apartment. She sighed. Now that she was calmer she was regretting her earlier outburst in the car. She'd come across like a complete harridan, forcing Danny into the role of henpecked husband whether he liked it or not.

She hated herself for the way she'd reacted, it just wasn't her. The thought of having to watch her ex around his new girlfriend had thrown her into a complete tailspin however. She was already embarrassed by her meltdown of a few days before, not to mention humiliated by the fact that Danny had felt the need to appoint Flack as her unofficial babysitter as a result. It made it worse that he cared somehow. It only made her more aware of what she might still have if she hadn't thrown it all away.

She slowly made her way back to the bedroom and stood in the doorway, watching silently as Danny quickly and efficiently photographed the body. As he set his camera aside, she took a deep breath and stepped further into the room.

"I'm sorry."

Danny looked up at her apology. "Don't sweat it. I know how that kind of thing gets to you. It bothers me too. Being a parent, you can't help but project your own child into that situation. I know it's hard, but you just have to try to set it aside."

Lindsay brushed her hair back from her face. "I didn't mean that," she said. "I meant about before – in the car. Hell, about my outburst on Monday too. It wasn't fair on you, totally out of line under the circumstances."

Danny sat back on his heels. "Lindsay…" He broke off with a sigh. "I don't know what to say," he confessed.

"You don't have to say anything. It's my problem not yours." She laughed mirthlessly. "If I wanted to win you back, acting like a total basket-case is hardly the way to go about it, is it?"

"And do you want to? Win me back, I mean."

"I…" Lindsay hesitated. The honest answer was yes, but she wasn't sure whether that was just a knee-jerk response to feeling so bereft, or whether it was an angle that she did seriously want to pursue. "I don't know, Danny. I wish I hadn't given up on us when I did, but you can't turn back time, can you?"

When he didn't answer, she sighed. "Let's just work the scene, okay? Concentrate on the job. Now's not the time for dealing with personal issues."

**OOOOOO**

Several hours later, Lindsay sat on the bathroom floor in her apartment, looking on as Lucy splashed happily in the tub. She'd left Danny still working the scene, knowing that he'd probably be there for most of the night. Unplanned overtime wasn't an option for her anymore though. Juggling her career with the demands of motherhood was a logistical nightmare, especially now that she was on her own.

Before, with her and Danny's combined incomes and shared accommodation, she had just worked the hours that suited and not worried too much about financial concerns. Now, with two lots of rent between them, money was considerably tighter. And while she was happy for Danny to contribute towards Lucy's welfare, she no longer felt comfortable with him supporting her personally. She was careful that every dime of the money he gave her was spent on their daughter therefore.

"Mommy?"

"Yes, sweetie?"

"Sing the duck song," her daughter demanded.

She smiled, shuffled forward and leant her arms on the edge of the tub. "Okay - how many have we got?" she asked, as Lucy lined up the yellow plastic toys in the water in front of her.

"Four." Her daughter told her, holding up her little hand with the thumb bent in.

"That's right. One for every year that Lucy's been in the world."

"Is New York the world?"

Lindsay chuckled at her daughter's innocent question. "As far as your Daddy's concerned it's the centre of the universe," she said. "But no, New York's not the world, honey. It's only part of it. Can you remember where Grandma and Grandpa Monroe live?"

"Montana!" Lucy proclaimed triumphantly.

Lindsay nodded. "Well, that's a different part of the world. There are lots of different parts. Maybe when you're a little older, you and I can go visit some of them."

"Can Daddy come too?"

Lindsay sighed and brushed a gentle hand over her daughter's damp hair. "No honey, but I'm sure he'll take you to some of them himself."

"Okay," Lucy said, accepting this as fact without further comment. "Sing now Mommy," she commanded, clapping her hands.

After a rousing rendition of 'Four Little Ducks' accompanied by Lucy's enthusiastic 'Quack! Quack! Quack!'s, Lindsay coaxed her daughter out of the tub and bundled her in a soft, fluffy towel. Her cell rang as she was rubbing the little girl dry and she reached out to answer it, knowing instinctively who it would be. "Hey!"

"Hey!" Danny's distinctive voice sounded in her ear. "I'm not too late, am I?"

"No, bath and bedtime is running a little behind schedule today. You still at the crime scene?"

"For another few hours at least," he told her. "I think we'll be done tonight though, so you should head into the Lab tomorrow."

"Okay." Lindsay agreed. "Lucy? You wanna say 'Hi!' to Daddy?"

She handed Lucy the phone and smiled at the stream of lively chatter that immediately burst forth from the little girl's lips. Leaving her daughter telling her father about the events of her day, she went through into Lucy's bedroom and withdrew a clean set of Disney-themed PJ's from a drawer. Her little girl had a fascination for all things 'Little Mermaid' at the moment so the 'Ariel' pyjamas were an absolute must. As was Molly, she thought as she bent to retrieve the favoured stuffed rabbit from where it had been tossed carelessly in one corner earlier on in the day.

Lucy wandered into the room then, the towel trailing behind her and the phone still held to her ear. "Me and Daddy are going to the ball-game," she announced.

"You are? Right now?" Lindsay said with exaggerated animation. "I think it's bedtime, missy."

Lucy giggled. "No, Mommy, silly. Not now, when it's on."

"Well, that's all right then." Lindsay bent to lift her daughter up in her arms and nuzzled affectionately at her neck.

"Daddy says you can come too."

"He does?" Lindsay was a little sceptical about that. "Let me speak to him for a minute."

Lucy obediently handed over the phone.

"Is that for real?" Lindsay asked.

"Yeah, I got three tickets, and you're not on shift, right?"

"No but what about Rachel?"

"She's working."

"And Flack?"

"Linds – I want you to come, okay? I think it's good for Lucy if we spend some time together as a family every so often, don't you?"

"I suppose, as long as you're not just…" she trailed off.

"Not just… what?" Danny enquired.

Lindsay sighed. "I don't need – or want – your pity, Danny. Don't you think I'm humiliated enough already?"

"God Lindsay - I'm trying my damnedest to do the right thing here. Why do you have to make everything so complicated all the time, huh? I thought it'd be nice for Lucy that's all. If you don't want to come then just say so!"

"And be the one who disappoints her? Great. Thanks a lot. The point is you didn't give me a whole lot of choice. You just went ahead and told Lucy what would be happening without consulting me."

There was a short, tense silence before Danny's irritated voice broke the impasse. "You know what, Lindsay? This divorce of ours? It can't come soon enough for me. Living with you was getting to be a real drag if you wanna know the truth. At least now I can be with someone who doesn't criticize my every goddamn move. It makes a refreshing change, believe me."

Lindsay reeled back from the sudden wave of bitterness. Deep down, she knew it was misdirected, brought on by frustration rather than any real intent. It sliced deep though and she couldn't control the resultant heartache. Her stomach burned and her eyes filled with hot tears, which she frantically blinked back.

She quickly handed the phone to her daughter. "Lucy, say good night to your Daddy," she instructed, amazed that she actually managed to keep her voice steady.

As soon as Lucy had said her goodbyes, she turned the cell phone off and cajoled her daughter into bed. She heard the phone ringing in the other room as she read Lucy a story, but she ignored it and concentrated her efforts on not allowing her distress to show in front of her little girl. Luckily, Lucy settled down without a murmur, a happenstance for which Lindsay was immensely grateful. She couldn't have handled any childish tantrums tonight. She was pretty certain she would have just burst into floods of tears if her daughter had decided to be awkward.

When she went through into the lounge, she could see the red message light blinking on the answer phone and tension tightened every muscle in her body. She didn't want to listen, she didn't want to hear, but some perverse need to punish herself had her pressing play. Danny's voice came over the crackling speakers.

"Lindsay just pick up, okay? Please?"

There were several variations on this theme before the longer message played.

"Ok, I get it, you don't want to speak to me, but you can't ignore me indefinitely. I'm sorry, all right? I'm sorry. I didn't mean it, not in the way it sounded. It's just that I feel like I've been walking on egg-shells around you for going on two years now. You react to every little thing; nothing is ever simple with you. I know I hurt you, I know I let you down, but you can't punish me forever. It's just too much. This destroyed our marriage, Lindsay. That's bad enough. Please don't let it shatter everything else. Call me, okay? Just call me. Please."

But she couldn't. She wanted to desperately, but she couldn't make herself pick up the phone. Instead, she sank to the floor, buried her face in her hands and sobbed until her heart could take no more. Danny was right. This was her fault as much as his. She'd let his past betrayal fester inside of her until it coloured everything that defined them. She was angry, over-emotional and she constantly looked for an ulterior motive in everything he did or said. She still loved him, but she couldn't view his kindness towards her as genuine. She wanted to believe that it was, deep in her heart she knew that it was. On the surface though, all she saw was self-interest and a need to punish her for refusing to forgive him, for making him suffer for something that wasn't her fault, something that he'd essentially brought on himself.

How had it all become so twisted? When had suspicion and mistrust become the foremost emotions in her mind? Dragging herself to her feet, she went through into her bedroom and gazed at her reflection in the full length mirror. She was a mess, a bitter shell of a woman who'd lost all compassion for the man who – while certainly flawed – had genuinely and honestly loved her.

And what was all this doing to their beautiful baby girl? She thought she was managing okay as a single Mom, but if she carried on this way then Lucy wouldn't remain unaffected. Children learned by example. She didn't want her little girl's innocent and fun-loving nature to be eroded by her mother's growing bitterness towards life. She had to pull herself together and get a grip for her daughter's sake, if not for her own. The trouble was she was emotionally and physically exhausted and she didn't know how to drag herself out of the black hole she was in. Most days, she just wanted to curl up into a ball and shut the world out.

The next day she succumbed to that feeling with a vengeance. She hated herself for it, but she didn't have the strength to resist. Calling in sick, she dropped Lucy off at day-care and then returned home alone. Unplugging the phone and drawing all the drapes, she crawled into bed, pulled the covers over her head and slept most of the day away. Her sleep was fitful and disturbed, however, such that when she awoke later that afternoon, she was even more exhausted than before.

Somehow, she dragged herself out of bed and went to pick up Lucy. She made her daughter dinner and settled her in front of her favourite DVD, too drained of energy to organise more constructive play for the little girl. Once Lucy was tucked up snugly in bed, Lindsay crashed out on the sofa in the living room. Within minutes, she was asleep and oblivious.

**OOOOOO**

Danny gazed blankly out of the car window as they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. Rachel was riding up front with Flack, who was driving, while Mac sat beside him in the back. They were returning to the Lab after processing yet another crime scene, and Danny was into his fifth hour of unplanned overtime as a result. His and Lindsay's case had stalled, thanks mainly to the latter's unscheduled absence. He'd left Adam back at the Lab processing their evidence while he'd accompanied Mac to the other crime scene.

He knew Lindsay was avoiding him. She hadn't answered any of his calls, or responded to any of the messages that he'd left for her. He'd have gone over there if he'd had the time, but today had been manic and he hadn't had a spare moment to himself. He was ashamed of his outburst. Frustration at Lindsay's stubbornness had gotten the better of him and he'd been unnecessarily cruel. Yes, he did sometimes feel like that, but it wasn't his overriding emotion towards her. He wasn't glad that their marriage had ended, he was genuinely sad that it hadn't worked out for them.

The radio crackled, issuing a request for assistance at a nearby apartment fire. It took a moment for the address to filter into his distracted brain. When it did, he'd never known fear like it. His heart froze upon its next beat and his skin chilled as icicles invaded his blood.

"Hey, isn't that…?"

One look at Danny's white face in the rear-view mirror and Flack realised his supposition was correct. He swore, switched on the sirens and cut across several lanes of traffic to get to where he needed to be.

They made it in less than fifteen minutes.

"Jesus!" Flack breathed as they drove up to the burning building. The blaze had completely taken hold and the fire crews were struggling to contain it.

Danny was out of the car before it had even drawn to a stop. He took off full pelt towards the cordoned off safe zone, Mac close behind him and Flack and Rachel following quickly in their wake. Several uniformed officers tried to prevent him from ducking under the tape, and he struggled wildly against them, too incoherent to identify himself as a member of the NYPD.

"Damn it, my wife and baby girl are in there!" he yelled at them ineffectually instead.

Taking charge, Mac stepped forward and they were finally allowed through. Shocked and blanket-wrapped residents, EMTs, fire-crews and police officers milled around in what could only be described as organised chaos. There were over a hundred residents of the burning apartment building, and at 2 AM most of them had been asleep in their beds. Finding a young mother and her four-year old child amongst them was like searching for a needle in a haystack. Danny resorted to calling out their names as he desperately scanned the crowds for their familiar faces.

"Danny?" Lindsay's voice was thin and reedy, but it was the most welcome sound in the universe to him right at that moment. He whirled around and saw her standing barefoot and soot-smeared, her arms cradling the blanket-wrapped Lucy, who was fast asleep on her shoulder.

"Oh thank god!"

Rushing forward, he gathered the two of them close in his arms to reassure himself that they were indeed real and blessedly alive. Lindsay was trembling with fatigue so he took Lucy from her to ease her burden. Burying his face in his daughter's hair, he pressed a shower of kisses to the top of her head as he cuddled her close and savoured the warm, welcome weight of her small body in his arms. Raising his head, he focused his attention on Lindsay just in time to see her already pale face go impossibly white.

"Shit!" He leapt forward and caught her awkwardly in his left arm as her eyes rolled back into her head and she slumped sideways in a dead faint. "Take Lucy!" he ordered his boss tersely as he joined them.

Mac retrieved his god-daughter from her father's arms and watched as Danny swept Lindsay off her feet and cradled her protectively against his chest. "Jesus, she's freezing!" he exclaimed. "Why didn't someone get her a blanket?" He cast about. "Where are the EMTs?" he demanded.

As Danny took off in the direction of one of the ambulances, Rachel exchanged a look with Don. She could see sympathy on his face and she had to look away from him lest her emotions overwhelm her. It was only natural for Danny to be concerned after all. You couldn't be with someone for six years, love them, marry them and have a child with them and not care. Their split had been relatively amicable; there was no reason for the two of them to hate each other. It was perfectly normal for Danny to want to take care of the mother of his child under the circumstances. It was stupid to be bothered by it.

And yet, she couldn't shake what he'd yelled at the police officers who had held him back as he tried to gain access to the evacuation zone across the street from the burning building:** '**My wife and baby girl are in there' not 'my daughter and her Mom' but 'my wife and baby girl.' He'd claimed ownership of the woman as well as the child. Like it or not, he and Lindsay were still emotionally entwined, however much they might declare that little Lucy's welfare was their one and only concern.

In fact Lucy was almost forgotten as Danny demanded EMT assistance for his unconscious ex. His hands fluttered about her smudged face, pushing her tangled hair away from her eyes as he gently laid her unconscious form down on a gurney. He hovered anxiously as the EMT's gave her oxygen and attached a drip to her arm.

"I'm going with her," he said to his boss as they loaded Lindsay into the back of the ambulance. Reaching down, he extracted Lucy from Mac's outstretched arms and then took his place besides his ex, settling his sleeping daughter comfortably in his lap.

"We'll follow in the car," Mac told him. "I'll call Stella. She'll look after Lucy for you if they decide to keep Lindsay in."

His attention still focused on the unconscious Lindsay, Danny nodded absently as the medics closed and secured the doors. The ambulance took off down the street, sirens blaring, red and blue lights flashing.

Removing his cell from his inside pocket, Mac strode purposefully back towards where they'd left the car as he punched the familiar number into the keypad. Stella answered almost immediately. "What's up, Mac?"

"How soon can you get to Downtown ER?" he enquired without any preamble.

"Why? What's the matter?" Her voice was alarmed. "Are you ok?"

"I'm fine but there's been an incident…"

He quickly filled her in on the details.

"I'll get there as soon as I can," she promised straight away.

Mac's lips curved into a tight smile. "I knew I could count on you, Stella."

"Always, Mac, always, you know that."

"Yeah, I know. I'll see you at the hospital."

"Sure."

He cut off the call and turned to Flack and Rachel who were following closely on his heels. "Okay," he instructed curtly as he pulled open the passenger side door. "Let's go."

_**To be continued…**_


	4. A Time to Reflect

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hello! New chapter for you all. Extra Author's notes at the end. Other than that, I don't have much else to say for once!

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 4**__** – A Time to Reflect**_

"Danny!"

Stella rushed forward as he came through the swing doors into the waiting room with Lucy nestled against his shoulder. "Is she all right?" she asked anxiously, lightly brushing her hand over the little girl's honey-blonde curls while she slept, her thumb firmly wedged in her mouth.

Danny nodded, shifting Lucy's limp weight in his arms. "Yeah, yeah, she's fine. The doctor checked her out, everything's fine. Her breathing's all normal."

"And what about Lindsay?" Stella enquired.

"I don't know," Danny replied. "The nurse said she'd go and find out what was happening. She came round on the way here, but she was pretty confused. I don't think she really knew where she was."

The door swung open again and a white-coated doctor entered. "Lindsay Messer's family?" she enquired in a professional tone.

"Yeah, yeah, that's us," Danny said, hurrying forward.

"And you are?"

"Danny, Danny Messer."

The doctor consulted the chart in her hand. "Her 'in case of an emergency'?"

"Umm yeah," Danny didn't contradict her. He was technically still Lindsay's husband after all.

The doctor smiled reassuringly at him. "Your wife is going to be fine. She's suffering from mild smoke inhalation and shock, but she seems to have no other ill effects from her ordeal. We'll keep her in overnight for observation, but she'll likely be discharged after the consultant's rounds tomorrow."

"She was out for a while," Danny said worriedly. "And she didn't seem quite herself when she came round."

The doctor nodded solemnly. "She fainted from the shock and also because her blood sugar's quite low. From what she told me, she's barely eaten anything in the past twenty-four hours. She's significantly underweight for her height and is showing some signs of clinical depression as well."

Danny closed his eyes at the diagnosis, guilt weighing heavily on his conscience. "I thought that she was just…" he trailed off, shrugging his shoulders helplessly.

The doctor nodded. "It's nothing too serious at the moment, but it needs to be dealt with before it gets out of hand. She was reluctant to talk, but she did finally admit that things have been strained between the two of you for a while."

Danny nodded in silent agreement, his gaze downcast.

"I'm going to prescribe her a short course of anti-depressants and you need to make sure she eats properly and regains some of that lost weight. And marriage guidance might not be such a bad idea either."

Danny opened his mouth to tell her that it was a little late for that, but then thought better of it. All right so marriage guidance might not be an option, but maybe some family mediation would help. He thought they'd been handling things okay, but the situation had gone rapidly downhill over the past few weeks. He didn't want a repeat of the other night. The bile that had spouted forth from his lips had shocked him, but he was aware that in some ways it had been justified. Lindsay had unintentionally provoked the uncharacteristic reaction out of him by being so prickly about everything. It was becoming more and more obvious that they were going to need professional assistance to help them get past this.

He sighed. "Can I see her?"

The doctor nodded. "The nurse will take you through. We're trying to find a bed for her upstairs; it shouldn't be too much longer. She's worried about your daughter. I think it'd reassure her to see that she's okay."

Lindsay's eyes were closed when he pulled back the curtain and went inside the makeshift cubicle. Her lashes lay long, dark and crescent-shaped against her pale cheeks and she looked small, vulnerable and almost childlike in the narrow hospital bed.

"Linds?" he said softly.

Her eyes popped open, the pupils huge and dark against the coffee-coloured irises and the whites inflamed and bloodshot.

"Lucy?" Lindsay's voice was hoarse and scratchy as she struggled into a sitting position and held out her arms for her child.

"She's all right." Danny handed their daughter to her, and then sat down in the chair next to the bed while she cuddled Lucy close. "The doctor checked her out. Everything's fine."

Lindsay's breath hitched in her throat as tears of relief slid down her cheeks. "I'm sorry," she choked out. "I'm such a mess."

"Lindsay – you're in shock, don't beat yourself up about it."

Lindsay nodded. "You promise she's all right?" She looked at him with wide, scared eyes, begging for his reassurance.

"She's fine," Danny assured her. "I promise."

Lindsay blew out her breath from between her lips. "Okay, okay," she murmured to herself, trying to regain her lost composure.

"Stella said she'd take her for the night," Danny said, feeling the need to fill the somewhat awkward gap in the conversation with words.

"Stella?" She lifted her gaze to his once more, her expression confused. "She's here? But… what? Why… why can't you take her?"

"Lindsay…"

"I mean I trust Stella and everything," she babbled on before he could continue, "But Lucy would be better off with you. She has her own room, toys she's familiar with. What if she wakes up scared about the fire? She's gonna want her Mommy or Daddy if that happens. If you were planning to spend the night at Rachel's, can't you put it off for one night? For your daughter's sake?"

"Dammit Lindsay! I'm not staying over at Rachel's! I was planning on staying here with you."

She stared at him incredulously. "Why?"

Danny was taken aback by the question. "Well I… the doctor said…"

Lindsay's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You… you talked to my doctor?"

Danny shifted uncomfortably in the plastic chair. "I'm still your 'in case of emergency,'" he reminded her defensively.

"Yes but…" Lindsay stopped and shook her head. There was no point making a big deal of it. Danny wouldn't see it as prying into her personal business. He'd just view it as something he had a right to know.

She sighed. "You're not responsible for taking care of me, Danny."

"Someone has to be."

"Yes. Me," Lindsay replied. "Don't you see? This is only going to make things worse. You're not my husband anymore – you don't need to stay here and watch over me. I've got to learn how to cope without you in my life. And what about Rachel? How do you think she's going to feel about you being here?"

Danny shrugged one shoulder. "She'll understand."

Lindsay let out a short, derisive laugh. "If you think that, Danny, then you've got rocks in your head. Accepting an ex-wife and daughter in your life is one thing. This is quite another. You've already made this mistake once before, don't do it again."

Danny frowned. "Don't do 'what' again?"

"How long before you decide you ought to sleep with me to make me feel better?" she asked pointedly.

The well-aimed dart hit dead centre. Danny stiffened in his seat, his eyes flashing blue fire. "This is _not_ the same."

"Isn't it?" Lindsay challenged; her brown eyes cool and defiant, "Feels a whole lot like another pity party to me."

Danny bit back the obvious retort and instead rose abruptly to his feet. "Fine," he said sharply. "I'll leave you alone."

Reaching down, he plucked Lucy from her grasp and turned for the exit. "Stella was asking to see you by the way," he threw over his shoulder as he left.

He had to resist the urge to plough his fist through the glass panel in the door as he slammed through it. How dare she compare the feelings he had for her – the woman he'd _married_ and had a child with – to those he'd had for his bereaved neighbour five years ago? It wasn't the same. _It wasn't_. He clutched Lucy closer to him and lengthened his stride, feeling the sudden need to escape the claustrophobic situation.

"I need a ride," he announced as his colleagues rose collectively to their feet.

There was a shocked pause before Flack stepped forward, "I'll drive you," he offered.

"I'll come too," Rachel quickly interjected.

"Okay, good, let's go," Danny said shortly, and then headed determinedly for the exit, leaving his friend and girlfriend to follow on behind in his wake.

The ride home was silent and more than a little tension-filled. Flack and Rachel rode up front, with Danny and little Lucy ensconced in the back seat. No-one spoke. Flack concentrated his attention on the road in front of him, while Rachel gazed blankly out of the window, her green eyes thoughtful.

Danny, meanwhile, was fighting the maelstrom of emotions struggling for dominance inside of him. He shouldn't be allowing Lindsay to get to him like this, but remaining detached was easier said than done under the circumstances. She'd hit a raw nerve with her accusations. Was he really such a martyr that he allowed his sense of responsibility to dictate his relationships with the people closest to him? He'd only wanted to support his ex in her distress, but in doing so, was he betraying Rachel in some way like Lindsay had so bluntly suggested?

He didn't know and he was too tired and emotionally wrung out to try to figure that out at the moment. Right now, his main priority was to get his daughter settled. Therefore, with that in mind, he pushed aside his confused feelings and leapt into action as soon as Flack drew the car to a standstill outside his apartment block. Quickly exiting the vehicle via the nearside door, he hurried around to the other side to retrieve a sleeping Lucy before he turned away with a terse 'Thanks.'

Flack reached out and placed a restraining hand on Rachel's arm as she made to follow her fleeing boyfriend. "Do you think that's such a good idea?" he enquired.

She looked at him, her expression resolute. "Probably not," she concurred. "But there are things that need to be said."

"Things that he's not necessarily in the best frame of mind to hear right now," Flack pointed out. "It might be prudent to let him calm down a bit first."

"Why? So that he can spin things in a better light?" Rachel shot back. "I think honesty is the best policy here, don't you?"

Flack sighed. "As long as you're sure."

"I am," Rachel said firmly, and then got out the car to follow Danny. She caught up with him in the Lobby just as he pushed the button for the elevator. He shot her a startled, sidelong glance, but didn't otherwise acknowledge her presence. He wasn't sure what to say to be honest.

Unfazed by his continued silence, Rachel rode up in the elevator beside him and then used her key to let the three of them into his apartment. As she pushed the door closed behind her, the silent impasse was finally broken.

"I need to…" Danny said, indicating Lucy in his arms with a bob of his head.

Rachel nodded. "I'll wait," she returned.

Going through into his daughter's room, Danny stripped the little girl of the thin hospital gown that she wore, and then re-dressed her in a clean nightdress before tucking her securely into bed. Stroking her wispy hair back from her small cherubim face, he pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead, and then sat back on his heels to centre himself before he went back through into the living room to talk to Rachel.

He wasn't entirely certain what he wanted to say. It was becoming increasingly clear that the situation with Lindsay was a lot more complicated than he'd initially believed. He'd honestly thought that he was ready for another relationship, but that confidence had been eroded somewhat by recent events. Was it fair to expect Rachel to understand that? To accept it even? They'd agreed to keep things uncomplicated between them, but maybe this was asking a bit too much of her even so.

The thing was he really liked her. His attraction to her was genuine and he enjoyed the time he spent in her company. It was relaxed and easy, and - god forgive him - he appreciated the regular sex too. The lengthy gap between his last time with Lindsay and the first with Rachel was the longest he'd ever gone without since he'd lost his virginity to Maria Valentine in the back of his brother's car in High School. He'd learnt new meanings to the word 'frustration' in those self-imposed months of celibacy, but, at the time, he just hadn't been ready to share himself in that way with anyone other than his estranged wife.

And then, just as he was finally starting to put the shattered jigsaw of his life back together, Rachel had come along. She'd been there in the background all of the time, of course, but he hadn't looked at her as anything other than a colleague until then – a beautiful colleague maybe, but just someone he worked with nonetheless.

A night out with Flack and a few others from the precinct had changed all that though. He'd found himself in conversation with the attractive redhead, and had discovered that he liked the woman that intimate tête-à-tête had revealed. His hormones had kicked in, and what had started out as just a night out with friends had become something more. After a couple of weeks of internal debate – and a healthy amount of flirtatious banter - he'd eventually asked her out on a date, an offer she'd accepted with a smile and a wry 'what took you so long?'

He'd been honest with her from the start though, that at least he could claim. He wasn't ready for anything serious or committed and he'd made that clear to her. He also hadn't been quite sure of how to handle things in regard to Lucy. Up until that point, he hadn't had anyone but himself to consider when he embarked upon a new relationship so this was a whole new ball-game for him. Everything he did could affect his daughter and that introduced an entirely new set of dating rules that he now had to play by.

Rachel had accepted that. She was a pragmatic sort anyway and not overly prone to overt displays of emotion. A little fun, some sex and easy companionship was something she'd readily agreed to. The trouble was they'd ended up getting on so well that their feelings had deepened without either of them being fully cognisant of it. Slow and easy was still the name of the game for them, but their relationship had strengthened to the point where he'd felt the need for Lucy to be made aware of it.

And now this – it was one undeniable spanner in the works that was for sure. The situation was a complicated mess and one he couldn't see an easy way out of. Lindsay was still in love with him, and, try as he might, he couldn't completely turn off his feelings for her either. The abject fear he'd experienced when he'd thought his family in mortal danger had not only been for his little girl. Even though he and Lindsay had probably had more personal contact with each other in the past week than they'd had in the previous month, he couldn't imagine his life without her in it. He just wasn't sure whether he was willing to risk the potential he had with Rachel for something that he'd accepted as unsalvageable months ago.

It was a Catch-22 situation. Whichever way he jumped, there were no guarantees. Unquestionably what was best for Lucy was to have her Mom and Dad back together again, but, on the other hand, if they couldn't make it work, it could be the worst thing ever for her. Right now, she was a happy and contented child because he and Lindsay strove hard to make sure that she knew that she was loved and cherished.

She'd been so young when they'd split that she didn't really know any different. To have her learn what it was to have them together as a complete family unit and then steal that away from her didn't bear thinking about. The residual feelings that he and Lindsay still had for each other weren't nearly enough to put their marriage back together again. It was going to take significantly more than that if they were ever to find some common ground on which to rebuild upon.

He sighed. He wasn't going to come up with an answer tonight. It would probably be best to take Flack's previous advice to just be honest and take things as they came. Rising to his feet, he went to rejoin Rachel and found her in the kitchen, making hot chocolate.

"Food for the soul," she said with forced lightness.

"Rachel…"

"Don't." She held up her hand to silence him. "I have something to say so just hear me out, okay?"

He nodded. "Okay."

"I like you, Danny – a lot. You're fun, you're hot, and I'm just that little bit in love with you. Carry on like we have been and I can see myself a whole lot more in love with you."

She shot him a crooked smile. "Broken hearts, however, are bad, and right now I think a broken heart is something I might end up with. I think this – us – was too soon for you after your marriage break-up. You and Lindsay have personal issues that you need to resolve that have nothing to do with me, and I don't want to get caught up in all of that."

He nodded. "That's understandable."

She stepped closer to him, smoothed her hands down the front of his shirt. "So I think that maybe we should take a rain-check on this thing we have going on. Give it six months and then reconsider."

He looked down at her. "You breaking up with me?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No, just putting things into a temporary holding pattern for a while."

He studied her for a long moment and then closed his arms around her and drew her into a heartfelt hug. "Thank-you," he said simply.

She turned her face into his neck as she returned his embrace. "Mmm, maybe a booty call every once in a while would be okay," she murmured against his stubble-roughened skin.

He laughed in spite of himself. "Nice thought, babe, but maybe not such a sensible idea."

"Spoilsport," she accused and then stepped away from him. "I should go."

"Rachel?" he called after her.

She turned back. "Yes?"

"For what it's worth, I'm keeping my options open about this."

She nodded with a hint of a smile. "Nice to know," she told him. "Just do me a favour, okay?"

"Anything you want."

Rachel paused for a beat. "If at any time the door does close, let me know, huh?" she eventually said, her expression grave.

Danny nodded. "Sure," he agreed.

After Rachel had left, Danny sat in quiet solitude for a time, drinking a cup of the hot chocolate that she'd made and trying to make some sort of sense of his turbulent feelings. Bone tired as he was though, he was eventually forced to retire to bed. He fell asleep the moment his head touched the pillow and as he slept, he dreamed, his unconscious mind catapulting him back in time to the night that had changed his life in ways he could never have imagined…

**OOOOOO**

_**Meanwhile, back at the hospital…**_

"I should go see if she's all right," Stella said quietly to Mac after Danny and the others had left.

He nodded. "I'll wait here for now," he decided. "Give her my love, won't you? And tell her if there's anything she or Lucy needs, she only has to ask."

"I will," Stella replied, lightly touching his hand before she rose to her feet and headed through into the business end of the Emergency Room.

Following the nurse's directions to the cubicle at the far end, she found Lindsay sitting in the centre of the hospital bed, her head buried against her knees and her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs.

"Oh honey!" she breathed sympathetically.

Hurrying forward, she sat down on the edge of the bed and encircled the younger woman's shoulders with a comforting arm. "It's going to be okay, kiddo, I promise you," she soothed. "I've been through this too, remember? It seems overwhelming right now but it'll work out in the end. And you've got your friends around to help you get through it."

Choking back a bitter sob, Lindsay raised her pale, tear-streaked face from her knees. "He was going to stay, Stella, but I made him leave," she said, her voice cracking on her tears. "I made him leave."

"I don't…"

"It just hurts so much, and the fact that he cares makes it a hundred times worse. I couldn't bear it, I couldn't." She drew in a shaky breath in a vain attempt to calm her shattered emotions. "I made him leave," she repeated wanly.

"I assume it's Danny we're talking about here?" Stella asked carefully.

"Who else?" Bursting into a fresh wave of sobs, Lindsay covered her face with her hands. "Oh Stella, what am I going to do?"

"Okay, okay," Stella murmured, hugging her close for a moment. "First you need to calm down and then you need to tell me where all this has come from."

She rose to pour her friend a drink of water, which Lindsay sipped at slowly, her teeth chattering against the glass. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice a little steadier when she finally handed back the glass. "I'm a total mess, aren't I?"

"It's all right," Stella replied as she took the glass from her and set it aside. Seating herself in the chair by the bed, she leaned forward and closed her hand over her younger colleague's shaking fingers, squeezing gently. "Now tell me - why the sudden u-turn?"

"It's not so sudden," Lindsay told her, her voice sounding rough and throaty from the after-effects of smoke inhalation and the remnants of her crying jag. "I've been feeling this way for a while now. I thought I'd get over it, but it isn't going away."

"I never understood why you broke things off in the first place," Stella said. "I know the two of you had a big fight, but was it really so bad that you felt that splitting up was your only option?"

"It's hard to explain, but at the time, things between us were just so…" Lindsay stopped, ran her fingers agitatedly through her already mussed hair, and then tried again. "There are things you don't know, Stella."

"So tell me," her friend urged.

"I don't want you to think that…" Lindsay broke off, sighed, and then fixed Stella with her coffee-coloured gaze. "Promise me you won't hold it against him if I tell you?"

Stella was silent for a moment as the implications of that request sank in. "I don't think I can promise that, Lindsay," she eventually said. "I _will_ try my best to give him the benefit of the doubt however. Just tell me what happened."

"Danny – he… he had an affair."

Stella's eyes widened in shock and stunned disbelief. "You're serious? That was what the row was about? Oh Lindsay!"

Lindsay shook her head. "No, no, I'm explaining this all wrong. It wasn't then, it was before, before we were married, and it wasn't an affair exactly, it was just… he slept with her after…after Ruben."

"The little boy who was accidentally shot during that bodega robbery? His neighbour's kid?"

Lindsay nodded. "He took it badly, felt responsible for what happened seeing as he was supposed to be looking after the boy at the time. I tried to help him deal with it, but he shut me out. Things got pretty bad between us after that. We hardly ever saw each other and he forgot my birthday too - which shouldn't have been such a big deal in the grand scheme of things – I mean men are men, right? Except it was proof of just how far apart our lives had gotten and it scared me."

"And the woman? The one he slept with?"

"Rikki Sandoval. Ruben's Mom. He wanted to help her and well, I guess things went a step too far." She sighed. "He didn't tell me, but I knew, don't ask me how, I just did. It broke my heart and I decided the best thing was to call it quits before it got to the point where we couldn't work with each other anymore."

"Me breaking things off was like a wake-up call for Danny though. He refused to give up on us, kept wanting to talk, make things right. I knew, in my heart, that he was genuinely sorry for hurting me, and that what had happened was a stupid and thoughtless mistake made under difficult circumstances. So I decided to give him a second chance. It was tough for a time, but we eventually got our relationship back on track."

Stella shook her head. "I can't believe I didn't know any of this was going on. I mean I knew the two of you had broken up for a while, but I didn't think it was over anything like this."

"No-one knew, Stella. We kept it to ourselves because… well, I guess because that's the way we were back then."

Lindsay sighed. "The thing was we never really talked about it with each other either. It was there, but we never acknowledged it, not as we should have done. About the only time we ever had a proper conversation about it was when I discovered I was pregnant with Lucy. Our relationship wasn't in the best shape at the time, and we needed to make some decisions about our future and that meant bringing the situation out into the open. We had other things to worry about though so the conversation was hardly in depth. It was more a case of Danny confessing, 'I did this, I'm sorry and it'll never happen again,' and me responding 'Yes, I know, you're forgiven and I believe you.' After that, we agreed to put it behind us and move on."

"But you didn't obviously."

"No, no," Lindsay denied. "We did, that's the thing. For the first couple of years after Lucy was born, we were genuinely happy. We had our disagreements but nothing major. Most of the time we got along fine. In hindsight, I can see that we nourished our family life more than we did our marriage, but we didn't dwell on the past, it was all about the present and the future for us."

"So what went wrong?" Stella asked.

"We hit a rough patch," Lindsay answered. "It's unrealistic to think you're going to be wonderfully happy all of the time, but a strong couple knows how to weather the storm. We didn't and things just escalated. We were rowing more, and Danny… he didn't always come straight home after work. He'd go for a drink or a game of pool first and sometimes didn't get back until pretty late. I mean, he went out before, but nowhere near as often, and he _always_ called me when he did."

"So it made you suspicious when he didn't," Stella surmised, "And when it happened more frequently than usual."

Lindsay nodded, her eyes sad. "All my previous insecurities came flooding back. It wasn't exactly like before, he was shutting me out completely then, but I felt like he was pulling away from me nevertheless. It was like I'd opened Pandora's Box, and my imagination just went into over-drive."

She sighed. "You've got to understand something though, Stella. Danny never once gave me any real cause to doubt him; it was all me and my paranoia. He was pretty tolerant of my lack of trust to tell you the truth, but there's only so much a relationship can take before it buckles under the strain."

Lindsay closed her eyes, tears slipping down her cheeks. "It got bad, Stella, _really_ bad. One night – we just, we had this huge row, the worst ever. Danny slept on the couch that night and he'd never done that before. We avoided each other at work the next day because we didn't want to bring our personal problems into the Lab. When I got home after my shift, he'd arranged for his Mom to have Lucy for the night."

Lindsay stopped and drew in a shuddering breath. "I don't think I'll ever forget the first thing he said to me when I walked in the door," she confessed. "He said 'we can't go on like this,' and my heart almost stopped. I honestly thought he was going to leave me."

"But he didn't."

"No – he said he understood why I felt the way that I did, but that I had to try to get over it because it was tearing us apart. I knew he was right, I knew I was being unreasonable and that I needed to make the effort to change things. We talked properly for the first time in months. He assured me that he loved me and that he didn't want anyone else. He promised that he would stop procrastinating about coming home at night, and also agreed to be a bit more considerate about letting me know where he was if he did decide to meet up with the guys for a drink or something."

"We also decided that we should make the effort to spend more time together as a couple rather than always making it family time with Lucy. Looking back, I think that was one of our biggest mistakes, Stella. We loved our daughter and we loved each other, but we made that love all about the three of us as a family and neglected the part of it that should have been about the two of us as husband and wife."

"This all sounds very positive, Lindsay," Stella observed when her friend momentarily paused for breath.

"It was," Lindsay replied, "But it wasn't enough. Our problems ran a whole lot deeper than either of us was ready to admit at the time. We were simply papering over the cracks in our marriage and hoping they would hold. Don't get me wrong, things were better for a few weeks, but then it all went horribly awry again - ironically because we were trying so hard to recapture what drew us together as a couple in the first place."

"I don't understand."

Lindsay sighed. "It's kind of a cliché, I know, but we decided that we should introduce regular date nights," she explained. "Organising something like that with the jobs we have and a three year old is easier said than done however, so it was a few weeks before we could put that idea into practice. Danny had a late afternoon basketball game arranged that day and I was on shift until seven so we decided to shower and change at the Gym and the Lab respectively and then meet up at Sullivan's afterwards…"

Lindsay broke off and swallowed hard, her eyes filling as the painful memories hit her with the force of a wrecking ball. "I was so happy that day," she recalled. "For months I'd been weighed down in so much negativity and finally things seemed to be on the up again. When Mac let me off shift early, I was in seventh heaven. I nearly called Danny, but I knew he was going for a drink with the guys after the game before meeting up with me, so I decided to surprise him by turning up early instead."

She sighed. "You ever see that movie 'Sliding Doors' with Gwyneth Paltrow in it? The one where they show you how split second timing can alter your fate? In one story thread, she catches the tube train and discovers her boyfriend in bed with his mistress, and in the other, she misses it and doesn't. I guess this was kind of like that, except I let past events colour what I saw that night and failed to see the truth of what was really going on until it was much too late."

She broke off and shivered, a sudden chill running through her bones and bringing goose-bumps out on her flesh. Stella silently rose to retrieve the folded up blanket from the end of the bed and then tucked it around her before plumping up the pillows so she could recline against them.

"Thank-you," Lindsay whispered, a wave of exhaustion overwhelming her.

Her eyes felt heavy and gritty, but she shook off the need to sleep. Now the flood-gates had finally opened, she needed to get it all out in the open and purge herself of everything that had been festering inside her heart for way too long. She looked over at Stella, her brown eyes shrouded in misery, her voice getting stuck in her throat.

"Tell me," Stella quietly urged, sensing her friend's desperate need to off-load her troubles.

Closing her eyes, Lindsay drew in a steadying breath and allowed her mind to rewind to the night in question…

_**To be continued…**_

_**A/N2: **__I know, I know, two cliff-hangers! I had to end this chapter somewhere though… _

_Also, for information, I removed a line near the beginning of this chapter which explained why Lindsay was more affected by the smoke than Lucy. I did check on a couple of US and UK goverment websites to make sure it didn't contradict any official fire safety advice, but, in the end, I felt that I shouldn't include it as I am no expert and fire safety is a very serious issue._

_**P.S**__. 'Sliding Doors' is a not very recent, British-made movie by the way (I think it's around 10 years old now). I'm not really sure whether it was shown in the U.S. although it does have Gwyneth Paltrow in it so I'm guessing it was. Anyway, it doesn't really matter if you haven't seen it – Lindsay explains the reference adequately enough!_


	5. Smoke and Mirrors

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi all! New update for you. Please take note of the time rewind at the beginning of this or it might not make much sense. I felt the story of the mysterious 'night at Sullivan's' would play out much better if it was told in the present tense. I would normally put flashbacks in italics, but as that would amount to virtually the whole of this chapter, I have refrained from doing so here.

You'll find an author's essay at the end of this (!), but for now, let's get on with the story…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 5**__** – Smoke and Mirrors**_

_**June 2012, fifteen months earlier**__**…**_

"Are you serious?"

Lindsay looked at Mac with hopeful eyes, not quite believing what she was hearing, "But my shift doesn't finish for another hour yet."

Her boss laughed. "I'm serious," he confirmed with a smile. "It's been one of those slow days – few and far between I know, but we do experience them every once in a while. Plus, a little birdie told me you have some place important to be."

Lindsay smiled. "That little birdie wouldn't be Adam-shaped, would it?" she asked.

"Possibly," Mac replied, conspiratorially tapping the side of his nose. "But I'd never tell. Now go, before I change my mind."

He watched her practically skip off down the corridor towards the locker-room with a smile. He wasn't totally ignorant of her and Danny's relationship difficulties. The signs of strain had been evident on both their faces over the past six months or so, plus Danny had confided a few salient details in the occasional unguarded moment.

Most marriages went through their ups and downs, Mac knew, and Danny and Lindsay had clearly been going through a rough patch during the first part of this year. They seemed to have turned a corner in recent weeks however. The smiles and the banter were back, even if the underlying tension hadn't completely left them. He hoped for his god-daughter's sake that tonight's date was the start of a much-needed up-swing in their personal fortunes.

In the locker-room, Lindsay paused in the act of selecting Danny's number on her cell phone keypad. Rather than letting him know that she'd be joining him sooner than expected, why not surprise him instead? She'd gone to considerable effort for tonight after all, and making an unforeseen and appropriately dramatic entrance would be the icing on the cake in her opinion.

Tedious as the slow day in the Crime Lab had been, it had at least afforded her a proper lunch-break for the first time in… well, never. She'd gone shopping and found herself spending more than was strictly wise for a married woman on her budget and salary. As well as the watch for Danny's birthday - which she'd left at the shop for personalised engraving - she'd spent an hour in her favourite department store perusing both the woman's clothing and lingerie departments.

She'd brought something from home to wear, but this date was meant to signify a new beginning for their marriage and she wanted to look her best under the circumstances. Ignoring the sanctimonious angel on her left shoulder telling her that the outfit she already had was perfectly adequate therefore, she listened to the persuasive devil on her right instead and splurged on a new dress - complete with new shoes _and_ matching accessories. The lingerie she'd then treated herself to was perhaps a little self-indulgent, but she figured it would be an added boon when their date drew to what she hoped would be its inevitable close.

Despite the improved relations between her and Danny over the past couple of weeks, they hadn't had sex in a while and she hoped that tonight would mark the end of the lengthy dry-spell for them. She hadn't felt much like making love when all they seemed to do was argue, but now that they were getting on better, she was starting to get a little antsy if truth be told. If she was feeling that way then you could pretty much guarantee that Danny was, so she fully expected both of them to be getting some long overdue physical satisfaction later that night.

Humming happily to herself, she took a shower and washed her hair, and then set about transforming her appearance from professional CSI to sexy, young wife out on the town with her adoring husband. Forty minutes later, she stepped back and surveyed the result of her hard work in the mirror - not bad for a thirty-one year old mother-of-one even if she did say so herself. Blotting her lip-stick, she fluffed her hair one last time, and then turned away from the mirror to stash her work-clothes in her locker. Picking up her purse, she then headed out the door, a jaunty spring in her step and an anticipatory smile playing at the corners of her lips.

"Hey Lindsay…" Adam said, glancing up perfunctorily as he passed her in the corridor, his head down and his eyes mainly on the printout in his hands. Skidding to a halt, he blinked and did a comical double-take as her altered appearance registered on his distracted brain. "Whoa!" he said, his voice rife with masculine appreciation

Lindsay smiled sunnily at him, appreciating the ego boost his reaction gave her. "You like?" she asked, lifting her arms and twirling on the spot for effect. The filmy material of her dress ballooned with the movement, revealing slender legs and dainty feet encased in two-inch strappy heels.

"Err…" Adam stuttered, his expression becoming pained. "You don't seriously expect me to answer that, do you?" he enquired tremulously.

"Why not?"

"Danny would kill me!" he exclaimed.

Lindsay laughed. "You scared of my husband, Adam?"

"Oh yeah, definitely!" he replied, nodding vigorously for effect.

She laughed again. "I won't tell if you don't," she promised. "Come on, Adam, I need a man's opinion on this. Is Danny going to be suitably wowed, or is he going to wish he was married to the hottie making eyes at him at the bar?"

Adam studied her for a moment, taking in her entire ensemble. He didn't think he'd seen her quite so femininely attired before. In keeping with the balmy weather outside, her sea-green dress was a thinly-strapped, summery number. It was fitted closely around the bodice but from there it transformed into a floaty cascade of romantic chiffon that ended just above the knee. Her sandals were of the exact same shade as her dress and her toe-nails were painted a pearlescent rose-pink colour to compliment the pastel hue of the rest of the outfit.

She'd fixed a delicate flower accessory into her hair just above her right ear and her jewellery was subtly understated – simple tear-drop earrings and a matching necklace that glittered blue like the sun reflecting off the Caribbean Sea. She looked just like a guest attending a relaxed, summer wedding – or a woman stepping out for a romantic evening with the man that she loved.

"If he's not wowed then he's mentally deficient," he told her with sincerity.

She smiled and affectionately patted his cheek. "That's sweet. You're going to make some lucky girl a wonderful husband someday, you know that, right?"

"Err, umm… I don't know about that," he stammered, embarrassed at the compliment.

"Trust me. Somewhere out there in cyber-space, there's some girl just dying to meet a smart, sweet techno-geek like you."

Adam blushed at the freely given accolade. Squirming a little in discomfiture, he swiftly changed the subject. "So ahh… where are you and Danny headed?"

Lindsay smiled at his bumbling awkwardness, but took pity on him and allowed the change in topic. "I don't know," she said in answer to his question. "It's a surprise. Danny's organising it – he just told me to get myself prettied up – which I assume means we're talking something more than a ball-game and optional steak sides."

Adam nodded. "Well, have fun."

"We will, and thanks for the ego boost, Adam. I really needed it."

Adam hadn't a clue why and he told her so. "You're beautiful, Lindsay," he assured her. "Danny's an incredibly lucky guy and he's lacking a few brain-cells if he doesn't know it."

Lindsay's smile faded a little. "I think it's a bit more complicated than that," she told him. "I've been pretty difficult to live with recently." She shook her head, forcibly clearing those negative thoughts from her mind. There was no place for them tonight. "But you don't want to hear about our marital issues. I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"

Adam nodded. "Sure," he said, and then watched her leave, his expression sober. He'd be keeping his fingers crossed that tonight was a success for them. He, like all of their friends, just wanted to see her and Danny happy again. If they continued to work at it, he was sure that they'd make it through this bad patch. What they had together was too good to let slip through their fingers. He just hoped they both knew that and refused to let their troubles drag them down.

**OOOOOO**

_**The **__**Men's Locker-room at the Gym, around two hours earlier…**_

"So, where are you taking her?" Flack asked as he buttoned up his jeans.

Danny named an up-scale restaurant in Manhattan as he reached into his locker and withdrew the brushed silk shirt that he'd bought to wear for tonight's date. It was a midnight blue colour with alternate, thin vertical stripes of sea-foam green and rich turquoise running through it. It was a little dressier than he would normally wear, but he figured he ought to make the effort.

"You don't think that's too over-the-top?" he asked as he slid his arms into the sleeves.

Flack paused for a moment before speaking, unsure of whether he should broach the mostly un-spoken of subject of his friends' current relationship difficulties. "Things haven't been too great between the two of you recently, right?"

Danny raked his fingers through his still damp hair before dropping his hands to fasten the buttons of his shirt. "Is it that obvious?"

"Only to those who know you," Don replied as he pulled a forest-green t-shirt on over his head. "You seem to have been getting on better the last couple of weeks though."

"Yeah, yeah, we have been. We had a serious talk a few weeks ago, agreed to make some changes."

"Tonight being one of them, I take it?"

Danny nodded. "We decided we needed to rejuvenate our relationship a little. It's been too much about work and family and not enough about being a couple lately. We need to spend some time alone together, figure out the best way to put the spark back into our marriage."

He paused a moment before shaking his head in mild disbelief. "I can't believe we're actually having this conversation, can you?" he remarked with some incredulity. "What happened to the days when we'd just bale out when the going got tough, huh?"

"We got old," Flack replied sagely. "And you got married. Baling is not really an option when you have a wife and kid to think about, is it?"

"No, no, it isn't," Danny agreed. He exhaled slowly, trying to combat the nerves churning in his stomach, and then let out a short, self-deprecating laugh. "I can't believe I'm this god damn nervous about a date with my own wife," he said. "It's completely crazy!"

"I would say it's a good sign," Flack told him, "Shows it means something to you; that you consider what you two have together worth fighting for."

"Mmm," Danny acknowledged the truth of that statement with an incline of his head. "So, do you think the restaurant is excessive?" he asked in a repeat of his earlier query.

Flack shook his head. "Nah – all women appreciate romance - even one as down to earth as Lindsay. And if this is about spicing things up a little, then some fine wine, a candle-lit dinner and some unashamed pampering never fails in my experience."

"Which would be considerable," Danny remarked slyly.

"Whereas you're Mr Inexperienced, of course," Flack shot back mockingly. "Come on, Dan – it's only been three years since Lindsay put that ring on your finger, you can't have lost all your game since then. Please tell me you haven't forgotten how to properly woo a woman."

"Woo?" Danny laughed. "What kind of expression is that? This is post-millennium New York, Flack, not vintage Hollywood."

"I've always fancied myself as a Rhett Butler type," Flack returned with aplomb and then grinned. "All right – forget wooing, have you forgotten how to persuade a woman into bed? Get yourself laid even?" He grimaced. "And that sounds entirely inappropriate when the subject of this conversation is Lindsay."

"Why?"

"Because she's like… _Lindsay_," Flack said, crooking his forefingers into quote marks for added emphasis. "Kind of sexless if you get what I mean."

Danny's eyes narrowed. "No," he said shortly. "Enlighten me."

"Not in a bad way," Flack hastily explained, "In a sisterly sort of way. Jesus! You don't really want me thinking about your wife like that, do you?"

"Probably not," Danny admitted. "But sexless is not a word I'd use to describe her."

"That's because our country girl from Montana pushes all the right buttons with you," Don told him. "Always has done and still does apparently - given that reaction."

"You insulted my wife! How did you expect me to react?"

"It wasn't an insult. I adore Lindsay, you know that. I think she's great, but she's off-limits as far as I'm concerned. I do not look at her and think 'wow! She's hot. I'll have me some of that tonight'"

"Good thing too because I'd have to beat you to a bloody pulp if you did."

"Exactly! So why are we arguing semantics here?"

Danny suppressed a grin. "Beats me – you started it."

"Is there a reason we're friends?" Flack enquired airily, "Because I'm not really grasping it at the moment."

Danny laughed and Don shook his head with a wry chuckle. "What time you meeting her?" he asked.

"Around eight at Sullivan's."

"Still some time for a beer and a game of pool then," Flack surmised. "Prepare to lose, buddy," he added combatively, clapping a friendly hand between his colleague's shoulder-blades.

Picking up his wallet and jacket, Danny slammed the locker door shut and turned to face his friend. "Dream on, Flack," he shot back scathingly. "You're going down, brother."

"Oh yeah? Wanna bet?"

"Twenty bucks says you'll be crying into your beer in less than an hour."

"Deal!" They shook hands on it. "You're going to be eating your words, Messer."

"Flack? Beer? Crying into? One hundred percent guaranteed," was Danny's brash response as they exited the locker-room.

**OOOOOO**

Smiling at the appreciative wolf-whistles she'd garnered from the two slightly inebriated young business executives across the street, Lindsay walked the last few metres down the side-walk and pushed open the door to Sullivan's.

The bar was just starting to fill up with the after work crowd and the buzz that greeted her as she stepped over the threshold was relaxed and carefree. She spotted Danny's basketball team-mates in a huddle over by the bar, but neither Flack nor her husband appeared to be among them. Knowing their somewhat childish propensity for challenging each other to pool contests, she threaded her way through the throng of people towards the games room at the back, guessing that's where they'd be.

The crowd parted as she got closer, allowing her to observe the goings-on from a few metres away. The tableau that greeted her eyes had her heart squeezing painfully inside her chest. Danny and Flack were indeed playing pool, along with Marty Greenway a cop from a nearby precinct who Don had attended the Academy with.

The three men were not alone however. Two long-legged beauties were playing the part of cheerleader with seemingly effortless skill. Given the skin-tight clothing they wore, they were clearly single women on the prowl and had apparently decided that a man in uniform was their prey of choice that evening. Whether said prey was married or not didn't seem to be of an issue to them as far as an instantly suspicious Lindsay could tell. The first, a buxom brunette was already all over an obviously willing Marty, whilst the second – a wavy-haired blonde – had planted her curvy and hot-pant-clad butt on the edge of the pool table next to Danny, who was currently preparing to take his next shot.

Lindsay felt her hackles rise even further when she saw her husband turn his head and laugh at something the woman said before he bent low over the table, expertly lined up his shot and struck the waiting cue-ball with pin-point accuracy. The ball dropped into the corner pocket with a satisfying crack, and she watched as he straightened up and punched the air with triumph before cocking his forefinger at Flack in a smugly arrogant 'you lose' gesture.

What happened next however, sounded the death-knoll on her marriage and pulled the rug right out from under her feet. If she'd actually been able to hear above the rushing sound in her ears, she was certain she would have heard her heart shatter and smash to the floor. The blonde, who had jumped up with an exaggerated whooping sound when Danny had made his shot, snaked her arms around his waist from behind and slide her hands brazenly into his pant's pockets, her fingers perilously close to what Lindsay considered her own personal property. To make matters worse, she then proceeded to nuzzle her gloss-slickened lips against the side of Danny's neck with easy familiarity, before leaning in close to whisper suggestively in his ear.

If she'd been able to see past the red mist that descended to cloud her vision, Lindsay would have noticed how her husband had quickly grabbed the other woman's wrists in an attempt to block her unwanted advances, and would have also seen how he'd shaken his head in rejection of whatever it was she'd suggested to him too. As it was though, all Lindsay saw was deceit and betrayal, and a man who didn't know how to keep it in his pants even with a wedding ring on his finger.

All her recent suspicions about his lack of fidelity seemingly confirmed as fact, the ticking time-bomb inside of her exploded like a box of fire-crackers. "Having fun are we, darling?" she demanded sarcastically as she strode into the room.

"Lindsay!" Danny jumped in shock and wrenched himself away from the blonde's limpet-like grasp, an act that only consolidated his guilt in his seething wife's opinion.

"What's this?" She flickered a contemptuous glance at her rival. "The warm-up act? Scrapping the bottom of the barrel with this one, aren't we, babe? At least the last one had a modicum of class."

"Lindsay…"

"Hey!" the blonde interjected furiously. "What's your problem, lady?"

"My problem?" Lindsay shifted her attention from a momentarily speechless Danny to the woman beside him. Her ice-cold gaze would have frozen a raging forest fire. "My problem is you with your grubby hands all over _my_ husband. He seems to be enjoying his sojourn in the gutter however, so maybe I'll just leave you to it. Trust me though honey, you're gonna be terribly disappointed. He in no way lives up to expectations if you get what I mean."

With that parting shot, she turned away, desperate to escape the pressure-cooker situation. Anger was only going to get her so far, any minute now she was going to fall apart and humiliate herself in front of everyone. She had to get away before that happened. She had to get away fast…

"Lindsay, wait!" Finally managing to shake off his shocked stupor, Danny surged forward and grabbed hold of her arm to prevent her from leaving.

The feel of his warm, familiar fingers on her flesh was too much for her to handle and her cool dignity instantly crumbled. Red-hot rage was her only recourse after that. "Don't you touch me!" she cried, whirling round and slapping him across the face in reaction.

His cheek smarting painfully from the blow, Danny let her go and stepped back a step, lifting his palms in a conciliatory gesture. "Look – it's not what you think…"

"Don't tell me what I think," Lindsay stormed. "I know what I saw and I… How could you, Danny? You promised! You promised! Oh God!"

She lifted her hands to cover her mouth as the emotions overwhelmed her. A hush had descended over the nearby bar patrons as events unfolded before them and her wretched sob sounded loud and harsh in the eerie quiet.

"Please baby… let's just talk about this, you've got it all wrong," Danny's tone was desperate rather than wheedling, but his attempts to appease his wife only made her angrier and her paranoia even more out of control.

"Don't you _baby_ me, okay? Just don't! How long has this been going on, huh? How long?"

"Dammit Lindsay! Nothing is going on!" Danny felt his temper begin to rise in spite of the need to stay calm.

"And you really expect me to believe that, do you?" she spat at him. "Do you think I'm a complete moron? How many times, Danny? How many times while I've been waiting for you to come home… And don't you defend him either!" She turned to glare at Flack who had stepped forward to intervene between his warring friends. "He promised me this wouldn't happen again. He promised me! I guess I know what his promises are worth now, huh?"

Wrenching her wedding band and the engagement ring Danny had bought her for their first wedding anniversary from her left hand, she symbolically hurled the pair of them into the centre of the pool table. "Absolutely nothing apparently!"

Her voice breaking over the tears that were now streaming down her face, she turned and fled, her only thought the need to escape from the shattered remnants of her one-time happy existence. As she burst out into the warm night air, she stumbled a little on the sidewalk in her haste to get away. Righting herself with an anguished sob, she made a beeline for the cab that had just dropped off a trio of laughing women a short distance down the road.

"Hey honey? Are you all right?"

Waving off the murmurs of concern from the three strangers, Lindsay scrambled into the back-seat of the cab and gave her address to the somewhat apprehensive driver up front. He'd seen worse in his time, but he'd been hoping for a quiet night tonight – hysterical women were not the most soothing of passengers in his experience. "Hey Miss…"

"Just drive, okay!" Lindsay hissed urgently as the doors to Sullivan's crashed open and Danny emerged from the crowded bar, his eyes wild and frantic. She watched as he cast around desperately for her location, his laser-sharp gaze like a beam from a prison searchlight. He eventually spotted her through the rear window of the retreating cab, but - much to Lindsay's relief - it was too late for him to catch up with her. She determinedly turned her gaze away as the car gathered speed, shutting her ears to the sound of his voice frantically calling out her name.

She didn't want to speak to him, not yet. She knew she would have to talk to him eventually, but she wasn't ready to deal with all of that right now. She needed some time to come to terms with what had happened, as well as the space to strengthen her inner resolve so that she wouldn't succumb to the demands of her aching heart and allow him to get away with making excuses for his behaviour.

Whether he'd slept with the woman or not was beside the point – if she hadn't turned up when she did, how far might things have gone? He'd not exactly been discouraging the bitch, had he? Smiling and laughing with her like she was the wittiest woman on earth. And what had been going on all those nights when she'd sat home alone with their daughter whilst he'd been out enjoying himself, huh? He'd cheated on her once before. What was there to stop him from doing so again?

She'd forgiven him for his indiscretion with Rikki Sandoval, but she would not be humiliating herself again. She had more self-respect than that. He'd had his second chance and he'd blown it. She would not be one of those women who put up with their husband's philandering and disrespectful ways simply because they were too afraid to go it alone. She was stronger than that; she'd had to be with the life she'd endured. She could handle life as a single Mom, she could. It was the path she should have taken in the first place in all honesty.

What on earth had possessed her to let Danny back into her heart? She should have known he couldn't handle the responsibility of a committed relationship. She'd said no to his first marriage proposal for a reason. Why the hell had she let herself be persuaded that he could be trusted, that he had changed and would be there for her and their unborn child as he'd vowed he would?

It had been crazy thinking! A leopard didn't change their spots. Danny was Danny, hardly Mr Solid and Reliable. She knew he wasn't a bad man, but he wasn't exactly husband material either – how had she let herself be convinced otherwise? It was a recipe for a disaster and she only had herself to blame for the way it had turned out. She should have gone with her first instincts and handled her unexpected pregnancy alone. It was only right that Danny was as much a part of Lucy's life as he wanted to be, but it had been a huge error in judgement to rely upon him to fulfil her own hopes and dreams as well. He just wasn't made that way, so why had she let herself believe that he was? She would not be making the same mistake twice that was for certain…

Closing her eyes, she moaned as her stomach twisted into painful knots of misery. She honestly thought she might be physically sick from the agony of this latest betrayal.

Oh God! How could he do this to her again? How could he? She'd loved him with everything that was in her. Why was that not enough for him? Why did she always fall so far short of his expectations? She knew she wasn't model-style beautiful and sexy, but was she really that much of a disappointment? She made the effort to look good, kept herself in shape with regular exercise. So her post-pregnancy figure wasn't quite as toned as her pre-pregnancy one, but was that such a big deal?

And maybe the physical side of their marriage had been lacking over the past few months, but she'd been prepared to work on that, hadn't she? Why did he have to look elsewhere when she'd been right there beside him, ready and willing to be everything that he wanted? Why wasn't that good enough for him? Why wasn't _she_ good enough for him?

Wrapping her arms around her middle, she curled herself into a ball and resisted the urge to give into the hurt and keen in distress. She had to be strong. She had to hold it together. She had Lucy to think of, it wasn't all about her anymore. She was a mother. She had a responsibility to her child to make the best of a bad situation. Her marriage might be crumbling at a rapid rate, but her commitment to her baby girl remained steadfast and strong and always would.

It would be hard, but she could make this work, minimise the impact on Lucy as much as possible. She just had to be strong, deal with the situation calmly and sensibly. Danny would have to accept that he'd crossed the line for the last time as far as their relationship was concerned. It was over, but they still had their responsibility as parents to uphold, which meant making a quick, clean break and not dragging things out for longer than was strictly necessary. Danny would understand that. If there was one thing she was sure of, it was that he took his duty to his little girl seriously.

Too seriously in retrospect – however wonderful a blessing Lucy most definitely was, she could not be the cement that held her parent's marriage together. In spite of their genuine feelings for each other, marrying for the sake of their child had been a massive mistake. She should not have let Danny convince her that he'd been marrying her purely for love. There was no way he would have asked her to be his wife if she hadn't been pregnant. He may have loved her, but not enough to last a lifetime. Deep down, she'd always known that, but, because she loved him, she'd chosen not to listen to those niggling doubts. She'd wanted to believe that they could make it work, that what they had together could be forever.

It couldn't, she knew that now. It was time to let go of that impossible dream and move on before it completely destroyed her. Her heart could not take another hit like this. The next blow would be fatal and irrevocable. If she was strong now though - maybe, just maybe, she would survive the heartbreak and find some peace in the future. It would take time, she knew that, but she would get there. If she held it together. If she was strong… She had to be strong. She just had to be strong…

**OOOOOO**

A hundred metres down the sidewalk, Danny finally gave up the chase and threw up his hands in despair. Tilting his head back, he locked his fingers around the nape of his neck and closed his eyes, trying to bring his chaotic thoughts back into some sort of order. He needed to focus; he was smart enough to know that the future of his marriage was at stake. Lindsay may have spectacularly over-reacted to what she'd seen, but she had reason. He'd betrayed her trust once before, he should have been more careful about getting himself into a situation where his actions could be so badly misconstrued.

He turned at the sound of footsteps and gravely met Flack's concerned gaze. "Don't say it," he warned. "I'm not in the mood. I'm a Grade A idiot, I know, and I don't need you to tell me."

"Actually my reaction was going to be more along the lines of 'what the hell was that?'" Flack replied. "I mean, all right, it looked bad, I admit, but she didn't even give you a chance to explain. I didn't think Lindsay was like that."

Danny sighed. "She's not, not really, it's just…" He bowed his head in resignation. "It isn't quite that simple. This is bad, Flack."

"Okay so you need to go after her then."

Danny shook his head. "No, that'd probably only make things worse. When she gets like this… there's no talking to her. It's like banging your head against a brick wall. She's not going to listen to anything I have to say until she calms down a little."

"But if this is as bad as you say it is then the two of you have to talk or you're never going to resolve anything."

"I know, and we will. I just need to give her a little space first. I'll take the subway home; that should give her enough time to cool off a bit."

Flack nodded. "All right, I'll walk with you. The station's a couple of blocks from here." He held out his hand. "You'll be wanting these."

Danny glanced down at the ring set in his friend's outstretched palm. Cold fear burned like spindles of ice in his stomach at the sight. He knew Lindsay – she may have been as mad as hell, but taking off her rings was something more than an angry gesture on her part. She didn't lose her temper often, but when she did, it wasn't something you took lightly. He was terribly afraid that the act had been horribly representative of her current state of mind.

Bending over, he covered his face with his hands as his emotions got the better of him. "Shit!" he exclaimed, and then swore even more vehemently when he tried to get himself back under control and failed completely in the endeavour.

"All right so now you're scaring me," Flack said worriedly. "What the hell is going on, Danny? I don't get it. Why did Lindsay react the way she did? And what did she mean 'he promised me this wouldn't happen again'?" he added as his colleague's words came back to him.

Danny raised his gaze to his friend's, guilt shining brightly in his blue eyes. "I slept with someone else," he admitted.

"You _what_?"

Grabbing the front of Danny's shirt in his hand, Flack hauled him up close so they were nose to nose. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't rearrange your face for you," he demanded, his clenched fist raised and poised to strike.

"I don't have one," Danny told him. "So go ahead, do your worst. Lindsay'd probably appreciate the gesture."

The resigned misery in his friend's tone punctured Flack's hot flash of temper and he let go. "Christ Danny! What the hell were you thinking?"

"I wasn't, that's the point. I was trying to block out the pain, find a way to accept what had happened, and well, Rikki was there and we…"

"Rikki?" Flack interrupted, his forehead wrinkling in confusion. "Rikki Sandoval you mean? But I thought she'd moved away. I didn't realise you were still in touch with her."

"I'm not!" Danny's emphatic denial was swift and fervent.

"Then how…?" Flack blinked as realisation began to dawn. "Okay, rewind a little. Exactly when was this?

"Over four years ago…" Danny's eyes opened wide. "Jesus Flack, you don't think that I would break my marriage vows, do you? I know people see me as some sort of commitment-phobic, but the opposite is true. I was brought up to take marriage seriously. Yes, I betrayed Lindsay's trust by getting too involved with Rikki, but - as crazy as it sounds - it was nearly losing her that made me realise just how much she meant to me. The thought of not having her in my life was just…" He broke off and sighed. "Well, as bad as it is now to tell you the truth. It was an epiphany moment for me. After that, everything was different."

"So Lindsay knew about this? At the time, I mean."

Danny shrugged. "We never really talked about it in any detail, but she knew, yeah - women's intuition and all that. It's always been like this taboo subject between us – I think we were afraid to bring it out into the open for fear of not being able to get past it. Turned out that was the biggest mistake ever. When things got rough between us, Lindsay's trust issues got completely out of control and made everything so much worse."

"And this talk you had a few weeks ago?"

Danny grimaced. "The one subject we avoided," he admitted ruefully. "We skated our way around it, but it wasn't discussed directly. I figured it was something we could deal with later when things were better between us. I don't know, Flack, it's almost as if Lindsay's afraid of what I'm going to say in that respect."

"Why?"

"I wish I knew. I wouldn't feel quite so much like I'm flying blind if I did."

"Jesus Dan!" Flack shook his head in disbelief. "You _have_ to talk to her before the situation gets beyond the point of no return."

"I know, I know," Danny replied, holding out his hand for Lindsay's rings. "Wish me luck, huh?"

"I want to say you're not going to need it," Flack said as he handed over the jewellery, "But something tells me I'd be kidding myself if I did."

Danny nodded sombrely as he slipped the rings into the front pocket of his shirt. "You're not wrong there," he agreed, "But I've only got myself to blame for that, haven't I?"

"You weren't doing anything wrong. Not this time anyway. You didn't know that woman was going to come on to you like that."

Danny shook his head. "Maybe that's true, but I shouldn't have put myself into the situation where she could, should I?"

"You told her you were married," Flack pointed out. "And the wedding band's a fairly obvious reminder of that. Geez! We only let the two of them hang around for Marty's sake. The guy hasn't gotten laid in months."

"And that's what you'd have told Holly if she'd shown up, huh?" Danny said, referring to Flack's current woman of the moment, a dental hygienist that he'd met by chance whilst investigating a case a few weeks before.

"Yeah, and she'd have gotten that. She's not really the jealous type."

"That's Holly though," Danny reminded him. "Lindsay – well, she's a different story. In some ways she's extremely self-reliant, in others she's completely insecure and vulnerable. And it's not as if I didn't know that. Okay so yes, the situation was entirely innocent, but I should have known better." He sighed. "I wouldn't be me if I didn't mess up every once in a while though, would I? I'm just afraid this particular slip-up may end up costing me my marriage."

"That's not going to happen," Flack told him firmly. "You'll work it out. Look, I'll talk to Lindsay if you want. Try to smooth things over a little."

Danny shook his head. "No, no, that wouldn't help. In fact, it'd probably make things worse to be honest. She'll just think you're trying to cover for me. You heard her, Don. It's not only about tonight; it's about all those other nights when I was out without her. I can deny things until I'm blue in my face, but it doesn't mean squat if she doesn't trust me to be faithful when we're apart."

"You'll work it out," Flack repeated, more to reassure himself than his friend. He didn't like to think that one incident could destroy an entire marriage. "I know you will…"

**OOOOOO**

Except they hadn't, Danny thought gloomily as passing police sirens roused him momentarily from sleep. When he'd gotten home, things had only gone from bad to worse. By the time dawn had arrived, their already shaky relationship was hanging by a thread. It had been the beginning of the end for them, and nothing he'd said or did had changed Lindsay's first resolve. She was adamant that things between them were broken beyond repair, and he'd been at a total loss on how to convince her otherwise.

That's why he didn't completely understand her recent change of heart. A few days ago, she'd told him she'd deliberately pushed him away because she'd been afraid he'd leave her. But if they ended up apart anyway, how was the fact that she'd been the one to make the break any different? And why had she been so sure that she was doing the right thing at the time, but was wavering in her resolve now? It didn't make any logical sense.

He knew that Lindsay was the kind of person who bottled up her feelings, but it had been fifteen months since that night. They'd moved on, were five weeks away from their decree absolute. Her sudden about face just baffled him and he had no idea what to do about it. Could they really find a way back to where they used to be? Or was that just an exercise in futility?

He wished he knew; he honestly did.

_**To be continued…**_

_**A/N2: **__I know Lindsay's reaction may seem a little extreme to some - or maybe not, I don't know! You've got to remember that this isn't an isolated incident though. It's been brewing for months now. She and Danny have never really talked about why he cheated on her with Rikki, so, at this point in time, she doesn't really understand the reasons for that. Plus, the situation hasn't been helped any by him staying out late to avoid the rocky situation at home. If you've managed to catch some of the (admittedly very subtle) hints I've been dropping too, you'll realise that there are some other deep-rooted personal issues that Lindsay's been struggling with as well… _

_Anyway__, the full reasons for why she reacted the way she did will be explored more thoroughly in subsequent chapters – starting with some words of wisdom from our very own Mac Taylor in the next part. Hopefully that should start to put things into better perspective for you. _

_Until next time then… CharmedBec x_


	6. Chasing Rainbows

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hey! New chapter, folks. Still pretty emotional, but also somewhat lighter in tone for once – mainly courtesy of little Lucy.

I know I hinted to some reviewers that I'd post an update a little quicker this week and I have – a whole 24 hours! LOL! I did intend to update yesterday but real life intervened :-(

Anyhow, please read on and enjoy…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 6**__** – Chasing Rainbows**_

Stella sat by Lindsay's hospital bed, holding her hand until she'd cried herself into an exhausted sleep. She was stunned and saddened by what she'd just learned. Part of her was infuriated with Danny for so stupidly risking the best relationship he'd ever had, but another more compassionate side of her felt genuine sympathy for his plight too.

The breakdown of his and Lindsay's relationship hadn't all been his doing. Yes what he'd done after Ruben Sandoval's death had been wrong and hurtful, but he'd tried to make up for it in the years since. Lindsay had been unable to let his past betrayal go though, and that inability to move on had destroyed the trust in what was - for the most part - a good marriage. At the end of the day however, they were both equally guilty of not talking to each other and allowing their relationship to get into the state of disrepair that it had.

What amazed Stella the most in all of this was Lindsay's tenacity in holding it together for so long. She could absolutely understand how the other woman had withdrawn into herself to protect her heart from further damage, but you would have thought that the barriers would have come down long before this. How had Danny's increasingly desperate attempts to reconcile not penetrated that thick wall of self-preservation that Lindsay had surrounded herself with? Stella knew for a fact that he'd kept fighting for his marriage for several months before he'd eventually given up and resigned himself to a permanent separation from the woman he loved.

None of that had broken through Lindsay's tough outer shell though. Paradoxically, it was the realisation that her rejected husband had moved on with his life that was the catalyst that had finally brought those seemingly impenetrable walls crashing down. What's more, Lindsay had clearly been spiralling into depression for some time now, and yet she'd still managed to keep that mostly hidden from the people closest to her.

It was actually pretty shocking when you came to think of it. What caused someone to withdraw so completely into themselves that they didn't understand the truth of their own heart until it was too late? Moreover, how could anyone fail to show any outward sign of their emotional suffering until it got to the point where they couldn't handle it by themselves anymore?

Stella was struggling to comprehend all the whys and wherefores of the situation, but she vowed to do everything in her power to help, starting with giving her friend and her little girl a home while they got back on their feet. It wasn't healthy for Lindsay to be living alone at present. She needed someone to watch over her, someone to be the friend that she so badly needed right now.

In addition to her own support, Stella was pretty certain that Danny wasn't going to sit on the sidelines and do nothing either. Notwithstanding Lindsay's obvious defensiveness towards him, he still cared for her, plus he loved his little daughter to distraction. There was no way he would leave Lindsay to struggle on alone. Maybe it was too late for them to get back to where they used to be, but Stella was sure that, given time, they could rediscover the strong bonds of friendship that they used to share.

Manners so deeply ingrained in him that he acted upon them without thought, Mac stood up as she re-entered the hospital waiting room. "That took a while," he remarked, a question in his eyes as he studied the thoughtful expression on her face.

Stella nodded gravely. "Want to grab some bad coffee?" she said, hooking a friendly arm through his. "Lindsay's going to need someone with her when she wakes up, and I need something to keep me alert until then."

"All right," Mac amiably agreed. "I think there's a twenty-four hour diner across the street. How about we go there? It should be a step up from hospital coffee at least."

"Throw in a lemon and poppy-seed muffin with that and you might just be my best friend for life," Stella quipped with a teasing smile.

"And here's me thinking I'd earned that title already," Mac responded dryly. "I'm crushed, Stella, absolutely crushed."

Stella laughed, grateful for the lift in mood. She was feeling a little emotionally drained right now such was the depth of feeling that Lindsay had tearfully expressed to her. Making comfortable small talk, the two long-time friends left the hospital grounds, crossed the busy street and entered the brightly lit diner opposite. Settling themselves in a corner booth, they continued to idly chat whilst the waitress first took and then delivered their order.

"So are you going to tell me or do I have to guess?" Mac prompted as Stella took a generous bite of the light, buttery muffin that he'd just bought for her.

Letting out a resigned sigh, Stella proceeded to fill him in on what she'd just learned from Lindsay. "Part of me wants to wring Danny's neck," she said when her narrative came to a close. "But another part of me thinks that people make mistakes and that – as long as they learn from them - they deserve a second chance."

Mac nodded sagely in response.

"I can't believe they let it get this far though!" Stella burst out in frustration before he could do anything other than silently acknowledge her basic sentiment. "I mean what were they thinking of, Mac?"

Mac sighed. "I think when love is involved; the heart can sometimes rule the head in such matters. Lindsay was scared and she allowed that fear to blind her to the true reality of Danny's actions that night."

"If only they'd talked properly about what happened in the first place," Stella lamented. "When they got back together after their brief split, I mean. None of this would have been necessary if they had."

Mac paused to take a sip of his coffee before responding. "Hindsight's a wonderful thing, Stella," he observed. "But it's not always that easy to see the wood for the trees when you're in the middle of a forest. Imagine that you've been seeing someone for a while - things are going well and you're having fun together. It's all very carefree and spontaneous, but that's just fine because you both agreed to take things slowly and not rush into anything."

"And then something terrible happens, something that rips that cosy world apart. Something that makes you realise that the person you thought was simply a lover and a friend is actually someone you've fallen deeply in love with. Things are bad for a while, but you agree to give your relationship another go because it's what you both want. And yes, you know you should probably talk, work through whatever drove you apart in the first place, but suddenly there's so much more at stake, so much more to lose. So you decide to place your trust in the love that you've discovered for each other, and lock all the bad stuff away in a box that you don't ever intend to re-open."

Stella nodded thoughtfully. "Pandora's box," she mused.

"That'd be one way of describing it, yes," Mac concurred.

"It's what Lindsay said," Stella explained. "She said it was like she'd opened Pandora's Box. All of her old trust issues resurfaced and she didn't know how to contain them."

"Maybe pushing Danny away the way she did was her method of doing that," Mac suggested. "Lindsay has always struck me as someone who needs to be in control, and I guess this was her somewhat twisted way of holding onto that. It only caused her more pain in the end, but maybe for a time, things didn't seem quite so unmanageable to her. She'd have found a certain comfort in focusing on the practicalities, I think – even if those practicalities did involve separation and divorce. Facing the emotional reality of what she feared the most was much more traumatic for her."

Stella smiled fondly at him. "You're a wise individual, Mac Taylor," she remarked in a wistful tone of voice.

"No," Mac replied. "Just old enough to know that the choices you make in the heat of the moment are often the easy ones rather than the right ones. Choosing the path of least resistance is human nature really, but I think if you can find the courage to travel the more difficult route, you'll discover that the rewards are substantially greater."

He set his cup back down on the table and reached behind him to pick up his jacket. "Now, I don't know about you, but I would say that's just about enough philosophising for one night," he said as he rose to leave.

"It's up to Danny and Lindsay to work this out though, Stella," he went on to say as they crossed the road on their way back to the hospital. "We can't make their decisions for them, however much we might wish to."

"Don't you just want to knock their heads together though?" Stella asked.

Mac chuckled. "All the time, but I think some might consider that distinctly unprofessional."

He paused before continuing on in a more serious vein. "They'll find a way through this because they have to. They have my beautiful little god-daughter to think of, and - if there's one thing I do know - it's that Lucy is the apple of both their eyes. They'd do anything for her."

"I know, I know, it just makes me so sad. I watched Danny struggle to cope when they first split up, whereas Lindsay seemed to be handling their break-up fine. And now I'm watching Lindsay coming apart at the seams, while Danny seems to have got his act together and moved on with his life."

"All we can do is be there to support them in whatever choice they decide to make," Mac said.

"That's what friends are for, huh?" Stella said with a sad smile.

"That's what friends are for," Mac concurred with a nod.

**OOOOOO**

"Daddy, wake up! Wake up! It's morning time."

Danny was jolted rudely awake by his daughter's chirping voice and her flying leap into the centre of his bed. Brushing a hand over his face, he groaned and glanced, bleary-eyed, at the clock on the nightstand.

8 AM. Less than four hours' sleep was not conducive to basic alertness, but he figured he didn't have much choice in the matter. Lucy had decided it was time for him to get up, so get up he would. He was a complete slave to the whims of a four year old girl. How the hell had that happened, huh?

Well, he figured - if you couldn't beat 'em, join 'em …

"R-rargh!"

Rearing up from under the bedclothes, he caught his little girl around the waist and gently flipped her over onto her back. "Hungry…" he growled, blowing raspberries against her stomach before pretending to nibble at her neck.

He was rewarded by Lucy's delighted giggles. "No, no, Daddy, not the hungry monster, not the hungry monster," she squealed, squirming in his grasp.

He drew back and looked down at his gorgeous little wriggle-monster. "And what turns the hungry monster into the snuggle monster?" he enquired, playing out a familiar ritual between them.

"PIZZA!" Lucy shouted, making him laugh.

"Well, it's breakfast time so I think maybe we'll go with pancakes. How's that, baby girl?"

Lucy considered. "Blueberry ones?" she asked, her expression calculated. "Wiv Syrup?"

He laughed again. "I'll give you blueberry ones with syrup, you little monster," he declared, actually rather impressed at her deviousness but trying hard not to let on. Reaching out a finger, he playfully poked her little button nose, smiling as she scrunched up her face in an almost perfect imitation of Lindsay's habitual response to the same gesture.

He rolled out of bed and reached for one of the t-shirts that sat in a pile on a nearby chair. Putting away laundry wasn't one of his strong suits, but at least they were ironed and folded for once. After pulling the garment on over his head, he turned to regard his daughter, who was sitting cross-legged in the centre of the mattress, eyeing him warily.

"Are you the snuggle-monster yet?" she asked.

He chuckled and bent to lift her up in his arms. "The hungry monster is back in his cage," he assured her as he settled her comfortably on his hip and lightly kissed her cheek. "But he desperately needs coffee or he might just stage a jail-break."

"What's a jail-break?" Lucy asked on cue.

Danny shook his head. "Never mind," he said as he deposited her in her special chair at the breakfast bar. Rather than being just a long-legged stool like the others, this one had a back and sides and a thin safety belt to prevent her from falling out. "You want some juice?" he asked, turning towards the refrigerator.

"Yes please, thank-you," Lucy said in reply. "Daddy?" she enquired a short while later.

"Mmm?" Danny said as he gathered the ingredients for their pancake breakfast.

"How do fire-men put out fires?"

Danny stopped what he was doing and looked over at her. He should have expected this, he supposed. "With lots of water," he told her simply.

"Why do they wear the funny hats?"

It took a moment for Danny to realise that she meant their breathing apparatus, "Because sometimes the smoke from a fire can make people sick," he explained. "The hats stop that from happening."

"The smoke made me cough," she informed him.

He reached out and ruffled her hair, "Not too much though, huh, baby?"

"No, Mommy coughed lots more," Lucy said.

"Where _is_ Mommy, Daddy?" she suddenly asked after a beat of silence.

Danny sighed, not entirely sure how much he should tell her. "Mommy's in the hospital, sweetheart."

Lucy's eyes went wide. "'Cus she coughed too much?"

Danny nodded. "More or less. But don't you worry, okay? The doctors are going to make her all better."

"You promise?" Danny's heart ached when he saw Lucy's lower lip tremble and her big blue eyes fill with tears.

"I promise, munchkin," he said, bending to kiss the top of her head. "We'll go see her after breakfast, yeah?"

Reassured, his daughter nodded. "We have to take flowers," she said. "That's what you do when someone is in the hospital."

Danny nodded. "We'll buy some on the way."

"And sometimes you take balloons too," Lucy continued.

Danny suppressed a grin at the hopeful note in her voice. "We'll see," he said. "Now – who wants blueberry pancakes?"

Lucy's hand shot up immediately. "ME!" she squealed, making his ears ring.

"Really?" he teased. "I thought little girl's only liked oatmeal."

"I'm a big girl now," Lucy told him confidently. "Mommy says so."

Danny chuckled. "Yeah, I bet she does," he remarked with wry amusement.

Two hours later, he was walking down a hospital corridor with Lucy skipping along beside him, chattering a mile a minute about everything and nothing. Tuning out her childish prattle, he wondered how on earth he should approach the forthcoming visit. He and Lindsay had not parted on the best of terms to say the least, but he couldn't deny Lucy's right to see her Mom under the circumstances.

Plus there were other, more practical arrangements to sort out too – like where his daughter and estranged wife were going to be living for one. A brief conversation with Flack that morning had established that their apartment building was un-inhabitable after the fire. Clean-up crews were going in to retrieve as many personal belongings as possible, but the two of them were basically homeless all the same. He was somewhat relieved to find Stella in residence when he finally located Lindsay's hospital room therefore.

"Mommy!" Lucy cried, letting go of his hand and rushing forward to greet her mother as if she hadn't seen her in weeks.

"Hey baby," Lindsay smiled, reaching out to lift her daughter into her lap as the little girl scrambled up onto the bed beside her. "How you doing?"

"I'm okay," Lucy said after she'd planted a smacker of a kiss on her Mom's offered lips. "We had pancakes for breakfast because of the hungry monster, and Daddy said the doctors were going to make you all better."

Used to her daughter's convoluted thought patterns, Lindsay nodded. "Yes, they are. Mommy's throat is still a little sore from the smoke, but it's feeling much better today."

"You sound like a frog!" Lucy giggled.

Lindsay laughed in spite of the misery that lay heavy on her heart. Her daughter could always raise a smile even in the worst of times.

"We brought you flowers," Lucy proclaimed proudly then. "I chose them, but Daddy paid."

"With the money that grows on trees," Danny quipped as he approached the bed. He held out the bunch of paper-wrapped flowers, feeling decidedly awkward about it.

Lindsay bit her bottom lip as she took them from his out-stretched hand. "Thank-you," she said quietly. "They're beautiful."

Oblivious to the tension between her parents, Lucy touched a small finger to the petals of one of the flowers. "They're like a rainbow," she said. "The lady in the shop said we could have one of each colour even though she doesn't normally do that."

Lindsay smiled, knowing how persuasive her daughter could be when she put her mind to it. She had inherited the Messer charm in spades that was for sure.

"She didn't have any balloons though," Lucy went on, the artful note in her voice clueing her mother into her not-so-secret desire for said balloon.

"Oh, that's too bad," she said in a mock sorrowful tone. "I would have liked that. " She shot a small smile at Danny and was cheered when he winked at her in return.

"Maybe the shop downstairs has them?" Lucy said brightly, her eyes filled with renewed hope. "Can we go look Daddy?"

Stella, who had remained silent up until this point, rose to her feet. "How about you and I go take a look, sweetie?" she suggested, holding out her hand to the little girl.

Cocking her head to one side, Lucy considered the proposal. "You got money?" she eventually asked.

"LUCY!"

Her parents' twin admonishments were both swift and simultaneous. Laughing easily, Stella waved off their apologies for their daughter's behaviour. "Yes, I've got money," she said, "But you have to do something to earn it if you want that balloon."

"Like what?"

"It's a secret. I'll tell you later."

"Okay," Lucy agreed and climbed down from the bed. "I think Mommy would like a pink balloon," she said, slipping her hand into Stella's as they left the room.

Danny shook his head. "She's incorrigible."

"She takes after you," Lindsay returned with a smile.

"I was actually thinking the opposite," Danny said as he sat down in the chair that Stella had vacated.

There was an awkward pause as they both registered the unmistakable fact that they were alone together.

"I'm sorry…"

"Hey! That's my line," Danny cut in with forced lightness.

Lindsay shook her head. "No, it really isn't," she said, her voice quavering with emotion. "What I said to you last night… it was completely below the belt…"

Danny shrugged. "It's what you felt…."

"No, I… it just… it hurt too much that you cared, that you were prepared to stay here with me. I… I can't handle that, Danny."

"So you brought up the one subject that was guaranteed to piss me off?" Danny finished for her.

"Yes," she admitted.

He shook his head. "I don't understand you, Lindsay, I really don't. You're like this ping-pong ball that keeps changing sides on me. And it makes me do – and say – things that I end up regretting. Like the other night on the phone, for instance. God! When I think that could have been the last thing we ever said to each other…"

"Don't Danny," Lindsay pleaded. "It wasn't and I'm okay. I'm okay."

"No Lindsay, you're not. You've just been diagnosed with depression for Christ's sake."

"I let things get on top of me, that's all. It's hard, but I'll get through it like I did before."

Danny's eyes widened at that. "What do you mean 'like I did before'?" he questioned.

Lindsay ducked her gaze. "After the shooting…" she explained. "You think I could be witness to every last one of my childhood friends' brutal deaths and be okay with it?"

Danny shook his head. "No, no, of course not."

"It was rough, but I handled it. And I'll handle this," Lindsay told him determinedly.

"All right, but let me at least be your friend, okay?" he said, reaching out and closing his hand over hers.

"Why would you want to?"

"Because I miss what we had. I miss my kooky pal from Montana."

"But you have Rachel now…"

Danny shook his head. "It's not the same."

"Just friends?" Lindsay enquired, not entirely sure of what he was trying to say. "Not… not anything more?"

Danny sighed. "No, not at the moment. Let's just take this one step at a time, huh?"

"Baby steps?" Lindsay suggested with a hesitant smile.

He nodded. "Baby steps… but with no guarantees, all right? I need you to understand that."

She nodded. "And Rachel?"

"Rachel… Rachel is a factor – I won't lie to you about that. But umm– we're kind of on hold for the moment. She wants me to work out my issues with you before we… well, before things go any further between the two of us. We're on the edge of something, but we're not going to dip our toes into the water until we're both absolutely certain it's the right thing. That way nobody gets unnecessarily hurt."

Lindsay looked away as she absorbed that. Could she risk it? Or would it be safer to her battered heart to just let it go?

"I don't know whether I'm ready to be just friends with you, Danny," she eventually said. "I'm not strong enough to handle the uncertainty. I need to know that there's still hope for us."

Danny nodded. "I understand, but I don't think I can give you a straight answer right now. It's all still mixed up inside my head. I want things to be better between us, but I'm not sure how far I want to take that. We have so many issues, Linds. It seems like such a mountain to climb at the moment."

"So, maybe we should just let it lie for a while?" Lindsay suggested. "Wait until things have settled down a bit? We can be casual friends without actively pursuing a relationship – platonic or otherwise. We can work together, hang out sometimes maybe, and when you come to pick up Lucy or I drop her off, it doesn't have to be quite so much like… like…"

"A business transaction," Danny finished for her when she was unable to come up with the appropriate expression.

Lindsay nodded. "Like a business transaction, exactly," she agreed.

Danny considered her proposal. "I guess we could do that," he said a little dubiously.

Lindsay frowned. "You want more?"

"I… It's just… I need to figure this thing out, Lindsay."

"What? For yours and Rachel's sake? Or mine?" she asked pointedly.

Danny sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "All right, so I guess I deserved that," he admitted ruefully.

"You said that you and she had put things on hold so no-one got unnecessarily hurt," Lindsay said. "I know Rachel is the innocent party in all of this, but the two of you are not the only ones who can get hurt here, Danny. I'm holding all this together by a thread right now. I know a lot of that is of my own making, but I won't accept anything less than a solid commitment from you."

"There are no guarantees in life, Linds."

"I know that. I'm not stupid, but I also know that you can't have your cake and eat it either. When you've figured out what it is you want then maybe we have something to talk about. Until then, I can't risk it. It's not just about me, you see. There's Lucy to think of. I need to stay strong for her and I can't do that if you're messing with my head."

"So what? We're stuck with the status quo?"

"For the time being, I suppose we are, yes."

"Which puts us right back to square one," Danny said with some irritation.

"Why's that?"

"Because you… You blocked me out when I wanted to talk about this," he accused. "You waited until I got myself back onto an even keel …"

"I didn't wait!" she protested. "It wasn't like that. I was mixed-up, confused, I didn't know my own mind…"

"For fifteen goddamn months?"

"All right, all right, I know I have to accept a lot of the blame here, I'm not disputing that."

"I was doing okay and _now_ you're asking me to turn my life around? You want some sort of commitment from me, but where's yours, Lindsay? How do I know that you won't back off again if things don't go how you want them to? You're asking for a hell a lot of trust here, and it's not as if you have the greatest track record of trusting me."

"And whose fault is that?" Lindsay immediately countered.

"Mine," Danny said. "I know that, but you have to take some of the responsibility too. We made a pact to put all of that behind us, remember?"

"Except it wasn't that easy, Danny."

"No, I'm well aware that we were both extremely naïve on that score, but we still had an agreement."

Lindsay sighed. "Look – I get what you're saying, I do, but we're just going round in circles here. Let's step back a little and take stock, huh? I know it's probably not fair of me to ask this of you, but we owe it to each other - and Lucy - to not make any hasty decisions about this."

Danny stared at her, incredulous at the ironic statement. "Are you _listening_ to yourself?" he said.

"I ended our marriage on a hasty decision, I know that," Lindsay replied. "God knows I know that. But it's a mistake that I can't take back, any more than you can take back the fact that you slept with another woman and betrayed my trust in the first place. It's swings and roundabouts, Danny. What we have to decide now is whether those mistakes are something we think we can get past, or whether they're the reason we finally have to let this thing between us go."

Danny sucked in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "Part of me wants to walk away," he admitted, "But you're like super-glue, Lindsay. You've welded yourself so deep inside me that cutting that part away would be like losing a limb."

"Touché," was Lindsay's quiet response.

"So we wait, take a little time, and then go from there," Danny concluded.

A decision of sorts made, they regarded each other silently for moment before their private reverie was interrupted by the distinctive click-clack of approaching heels and the familiar pitter-patter of small, sneaker-clad feet.

"Look Mommy, look what we got you!" Lucy exclaimed as she burst into the room ahead of Stella, the string of the helium-filled balloon she carried looped securely around her wrist to prevent mishaps.

"Oh wow!" Lindsay emoted with a suitable degree of exaggeration. "Is that for me?"

Lucy nodded. "Do you like it?" she asked, her cobalt-blue eyes shining brightly with undisguised excitement.

Lindsay had to suppress a laugh. The balloon was decorated with a picture of Dumbo the Elephant, her daughter's favourite Disney character, and the words 'Get Well Soon' didn't appear to be anywhere in existence. "It's cool," she said in answer to her little girl's question. "Thank-you, baby."

Lucy beamed. "I can look after it for you if you like," she offered ingeniously.

Lindsay's sparkle of laughter joined Danny's low chuckle. "Well," she said, pretending to consider. "Perhaps that might be best. I might lose it and we wouldn't want that, would we?"

Lucy rapidly shook her head from side to side. "No."

"Okay then. I guess that's settled, but you have to hold onto it tight."

"I will Mommy, I promise," Lucy assured her.

Stella leaned down to touch Danny's shoulder. "Everything okay?" she asked softly.

He looked up into her face, reading in her eyes her newly acquired knowledge about their situation. "She told you..." he said, before breaking off to shoot a quick, protesting glance at Lindsay. She was absorbed in their daughter however, so failed to notice the silent remonstrance.

Stella nodded. "Almost everything, I think," she said. "But don't be too hard on her, okay? She was pretty upset last night and she needed someone to talk to."

Danny sighed, knowing it was unfair to expect Lindsay to keep everything to herself. He'd talked to Don about it, hadn't he? This wasn't really any different from that when all was said and done.

"I'm not making any judgements here, Danny," Stella went on to assure him. "If it makes you feel any better, Lindsay was pretty insistent that I didn't hold it against you in anyway."

Danny nodded, suitably mollified by the information. "In answer to your previous question, it's a bit of a case of 'wait and see' at the moment," he told her.

"Which is one up from where you were before," Stella pointed out.

"I guess," he conceded.

"I have faith in you."

Danny smiled in spite of himself. "You're an eternal optimist, Stell'."

"And you two are experts at sabotaging yourselves in my opinion."

He shrugged. "Maybe that's for a reason."

"Only you can figure that out, Danny. All I know is you've come this far, are you really prepared to let it all go without giving it one last shot?"

"That's the million dollar question, isn't it?" Danny replied. "And one I don't really have an answer to right now."

"So take the time to find it," Stella suggested.

"I think that's what we just agreed – in a roundabout sort of way anyway."

Stella nodded in satisfaction. "Good. There may be hope for you yet."

"Thanks," Danny said with friendly acidity.

"You're welcome, kiddo," Stella responded, rubbing a sympathetic hand between his shoulder-blades before she turned her attention to mother and daughter.

"So, who's up for ice-cream once Mommy gets sprung from here?" she asked brightly.

The answer to that particular question, of course, was one hundred percent predictable…

_**To be continued…**_

_**A/N2: **__Okay so I imagine you may be throwing metaphorical items at your computer screen right about now, but I don't think you can go from the brink of divorce to reconciliation or even friendship in the blink of an eye. There are so many emotions involved – especially when you're Danny and Lindsay Messer. _

_Still, it's a start, right? Let's just see where we go from here… _


	7. A Place to Start

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hello again one and all. A brand-new chapter for you, plus - especially for TAsolo – a Friday update :-) I normally post in the morning and it's late evening right now, but I'm hoping with the time difference between here and the US, it'll still be up in time for you to read before you leave. Also, I've only really got time to post tonight, but I promise I'll reply to my Chapter 6 reviews some time over the weekend.

Anyway, enough waffle, on with the show…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 7**__** – A Place to Start**_

_**Two days later…**_

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Don Flack asked his friend as they stood on the sidewalk opposite the burnt-out apartment building.

Danny nodded. "Yes," he replied. "I know the clean-up crew will do the best job they can, but I know exactly what Lindsay will want to try and salvage whereas they might not. Plus, there are precious memories of my little girl's first four years in there too."

"Exactly," Flack said. "It'll be tough to see all that burnt to cinders."

"Pretty much symbolises the state of my marriage though, doesn't it?" Danny remarked wearily.

"Depends on which way you look at it, I suppose. I thought you and Linds had managed to reach some sort of understanding with each other."

"To what?" Danny asked a little tetchily. "To not rile each other up anymore than we have to?"

"I would say there's a bit more to it than that," Flack reprimanded quietly, knowing that the uncharacteristic sourness wasn't really meant. "I know things are moving a bit more slowly than you would like, but Lindsay's not in the greatest shape emotionally right now and you have to make some allowances for what she's going through."

"I know, I know, and I do. It's just frustrating, that's all." Danny sighed. "Look, let's get this over with, shall we?" he said, stepping off the kerb and striding purposefully across the street towards his one-time home.

"So have Linds and Luce settled into Stella's all right?" Flack enquired after they'd pulled on their protective overalls and gloves in the Lobby and started up the back stairwell at a slow, steady trudge.

Danny smiled a little. "Yeah, although I don't think Stella quite knows what's hit her. Babysitting Lucy for a few hours is a hell of a lot different to having her live with you twenty-four/seven. She's like a little destructor-bomb when she gets into her stride."

Flack laughed. "Go on… you know she loves it, and it must be a load off your mind to know that she's keeping an eye out for Lindsay too."

"Mmm," Danny responded absently as they came out of the stairwell and headed down the corridor towards Lindsay's apartment. The walls were scorched black and the place smelled unpleasantly like burnt rubber. A sudden vision came to him of the frightened faces of his trapped wife and daughter as they were beaten back by roaring flames and choked by thick, black smoke.

Closing his eyes, he shuddered in reaction to the image. "Shit! They could have died in here, Flack!"

Don curled a hand over his shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "Except they didn't," he soothed. "Lindsay heard the smoke alarms before the blaze got too out of control. They made it to the fire escape with time to spare. Just be grateful for that and try not to dwell on the alternative, okay?"

Danny nodded. "They figure out what started it?" he asked after a beat.

"Bad wiring apparently," Flack told him, "Helped along with a little added gasoline."

"Arson?" Danny looked at his friend, shocked. "You serious? Someone torched the place?"

"Not exactly," Flack replied. "It was more of an unfortunate chain reaction. Numbnut in 2B was stock-piling the stuff – don't ask me why – I've given up trying to fathom out crazies like that. Unfortunately, his place is directly above where the fire started in 1B. The two together apparently acted like some sort of incendiary bomb, but you science guys know more about that than us mere mortals so I'll leave you to fill in the appropriate blanks."

When they reached the apartment, the two of them stood, side by side, silently contemplating the closed door for a moment. "You bring any keys?" Flack eventually asked.

Danny shook his head. "No."

"Damn and I'm supposed to be off-duty here!" Flack exclaimed. "Every time I do this, I swear I need acupuncture on my back for like a week."

Stepping back, he took a moment to judge the correct angle and then expertly kicked the door in with a single blow of his foot. "Of course a little charred wood helps things along a little," he remarked as he admired his handiwork.

"Hey! Wait up, guys!" A familiar voice called out as they moved forward to step over the threshold.

They turned to see Sheldon Hawkes striding down the corridor, still pulling on his blue NYPD overalls. "I figured you could use some help," he said as he joined them.

Danny clapped a grateful hand between his colleague's shoulder-blades, and then sucked in a deep breath and entered the burnt-out apartment. It wasn't quite as bad as he had imagined, but it was bad enough. Apart from the immediate area around the door, the damage was mostly smoke-related – but whatever had been used to douse the flames and prevent a hidden smoulder from re-igniting had ruined the majority of the furnishings. The place looked as if it hadn't been inhabited in years. The happy, vibrant family home it had once been was gone for good.

Moving a little further into the room, Danny bent to retrieve something from the floor near the door. In its partially melted state, he couldn't tell what it was, but from the bright colour of the twisted plastic, it was obvious it had been one of Lucy's toys. He stood holding it in his hands as he tried to come to terms with the senseless destruction around him. Maybe he hadn't lived there in over a year, but the place still held many happy memories for him and to see it like this was simply heart-breaking.

"Looks like the clean-up crew left those for us," Hawkes said, nodding at the stack of packing crates in one corner. "How about Flack and I start in here and the kitchen, while you take the main bedroom?"

"And Lucy's room?" Danny asked, a slight tremor in his voice giving away his innermost emotions.

Hawkes reached out and squeezed his shoulder in quiet empathy. "We'll do that together afterwards," he said. "That's gonna be the hardest right?"

Danny nodded. "Umm… make sure that you keep any photos, plus any drawings that Lucy's done," he instructed, focusing his mind on the task at hand rather than dwelling on the emotional consequences of it. "Lindsay'll want to keep anything Lucy's made too, however lame it might look. And she has some books that are important to her as well – her parents buy her one every year for her birthday – you'll see the inscriptions inside and…"

He stopped, considered. "Look, maybe I should sort through the stuff in here and one of you take the bedroom."

Flack and Hawkes exchanged an uncomfortable look, and Danny frowned. "What?" he demanded.

"We'll make sure we pack anything that's even remotely salvageable," Hawkes assured him. "You and Lindsay can sort through it later."

"And no offence, buddy," Flack cut in, "But I don't think Lindsay'd appreciate either of us going through her underwear drawer. That bedroom's kind of her private space and you're the only one of us who has been granted any sort of access."

Understanding his friends' desire to respect their colleague's privacy, Danny sighed and grabbed a couple of crates from the stack in the corner before walking the few metres down the hallway to Lindsay's bedroom. Pushing open the door, he was struck with a sudden and unexpected flash of memory…

_**Four and a half years earlier…**_

"_Wait!" he__ urged, catching Lindsay's hand to prevent her from entering the room._

"_What?" she__ asked, turning towards him, her expression a little irritated. "I've got to pack, Danny."_

"_You can do that later," he told her calmly._

"_My flight's mid-morning__ tomorrow, remember?"_

"_So we'll set the alarm," he said, stepping in as close to her body as he was physically able. Framing her face between his hands, he bent to kiss her upturned lips. _

"_It'__s our wedding day, Mrs Messer," he reminded her when he eventually broke off the slow, purposeful embrace._

_He watched a beautiful smile blossom across her pretty features at his deliberate use of her newly acquired surname. They'd just arrived home from the impromptu wedding reception that Mac and Stella had thrown for them at one of their favourite restaurants. Danny was pretty sure that the subsequent celebration would continue into the small hours of the morning, but he and his new wife had left early, slipping out unnoticed shortly after the coffee had been served. Their trip home had passed in almost virtual silence. Forgoing conversation, they'd been content to sit hand-in-hand in the subway car and contemplate the life-changing events of the day._

_Once they'd arrived home at the apartment __that they'd moved into only a few weeks before however, Lindsay's attention had immediately re-focused on her imminent trip to Montana. In contrast, Danny was determined to make the most of every last minute that they had together before he had to bid her a reluctant farewell at the airport the following morning. _

"_I've got to carry you over the threshold,"__ he declared with stubborn determination, "It's tradition."_

_Lindsay laughed. "I'm seven months pregnant, Danny."_

"_Don't worry__, I've got great upper body strength," he told her as he curled one arm around her back, and then bent to hook the other under her knees so that he could scoop her off her feet._

"_Mmm, I've noticed," she murmured, reaching out to playfully squeeze one of his biceps as he hefted her into his arms with only a slight grunt of effort. _

_A__wkwardly shaped rather than particularly heavy, he carried her easily into the room and deposited her gently on the bed. Her packing forgotten, she lay back against the covers and looked up at him with wide, slumberous eyes. "Come here," she whispered huskily, crooking her finger at him._

_Accepting the invitation, he joined her on the bed where they proceeded to tenderly consummate their union, the only words passing between them, Danny's quietly murmured 'Are you sure?', Lindsay's whispered acquiescence and a couple of gasped 'I love you's' some time later. Despite the physical awkwardness her pregnancy caused, it had been beautiful and right and, in truth, neither of them would have wanted it any other way. They'd fallen asleep sometime later, wrapped in each other's arms and emotionally replete from the whirlwind of the day._

Danny blinked as his memory clicked and shifted from recollections of his wedding night to his and Lindsay's first full day as husband and wife. He'd woken to the sensation of warm, gentle fingers delicately tracing the stubbled outline of his chin…

"_Hey!" he murmured; his voice scratchy with sleep._

"_Hey!" Lindsay whispered back, her tone sounding a little shy and awkward. _

_Sensing her slight discomfiture, he shifted closer and covered her mouth with his, the kiss soft and effortlessly gentle. Letting out a contented hum of pleasure, Lindsay curled her hand around the nape of his neck and purposefully deepened the embrace. They lay there exchanging slow, tender kisses for what seemed like hours before they eventually drew apart. _

"_You okay?" Danny asked quietly; rubbing the back of his thumb up and down her bare arm in a light, soothing gesture._

_Lindsay nodded. "Yeah, I just… yesterday still seems kind of unreal, you know?"_

_He entwined his fingers with hers. "Yeah, I know." He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the back of her fingers. "I'm sorry."_

_Lindsay's forehead furrowed in confusion at the apology. "For what?"_

_Danny shrugged. "I don't suppose yesterday was many brides' idea of the perfect wedding day."_

"_No," Lindsay agreed before her lips quirked up into a teasing smile. "But then I don't suppose last night was many bridegrooms' idea of the perfect wedding night either."_

_His face split __into a wide appreciative grin at her quip. "No," he concurred with a chuckle. "I was expecting significantly more chandelier-swinging to tell you truth."_

_Lindsay giggled and slapped him lightly on the chest in protest. "You're lucky you got any action at all under the circumstances," she said, rubbing her distended belly for emphasis_

_Danny laughed and __leaned forward to press a warm kiss to her forehead. "I love you, Mrs Messer."_

"_Mmm, I love you too, Mr Messer," she responded, as he closed his palm over her bump and rubbed in small, affectionate circles. _

"_Be good, kiddo," he said__ then, bending low and pressing a kiss to her rounded belly through the thin material of her night-dress "No coming out until Mommy gets back home or you're grounded for life."_

_Lindsay laughed and Danny's heart jumped inside his chest when the baby responded with a well-aimed kick… or a punch, he wasn't quite sure. Nor did care, just the feel of his child's movements inside of the woman he loved was more than enough to brighten his day…_

Shaking his head to free himself from the intruding memories, Danny cleared his throat against the sudden lump that had arisen and pulled his attention back to the task at hand. Now was not the time to be reminiscing, he had things to do and places to be. Moving determinedly forward, he pulled open the closet doors and set to work.

**OOOOOO**

_**Stella's apartment…**_

Lindsay stood contemplating the bottle of pills on the bathroom shelf in front of her. She hated the idea of resorting to medication, but she knew that she needed something to take the edge off her out-of-control emotions and help her think more clearly. And it wasn't as if the doctor had prescribed a particularly strong dosage – the anti-depressants were actually pretty mild compared to the tablets she'd been on to combat her post-traumatic stress disorder after the mass murder of her friends.

Grabbing the bottle, she twisted off the child-proof cap, shook out one of the pills and then set it to one side while she poured herself a glass of water. She paused for a moment before finally placing it on her tongue and swallowing it down with several gulps of cool liquid. There – done. Returning the bottle of pills to the shelf, she shut and secured the child-lock on the medicine cabinet before turning for the door.

Stella and Lucy's voices drifted towards her as she headed for the apartment's main living space. Her colleague appeared to be reading her daughter a story, and Lucy, as usual, was questioning every last detail.

"But _why_ did the wicked witch turn him into a frog?"

"Because she didn't want the Princess to marry the Prince." Stella's voice only held a slight note of impatience as she answered the little girl's question.

"Why?"

"Because then the Princess's stepmother would have to stop being Queen and she didn't want to."

"So she asked the wicked witch to turn the Prince into a frog?"

"Exactly."

"How?"

Stella looked up at Lindsay in desperation. "Is she always like this?"

Lindsay giggled. "Yes, pretty much. Oh – and 'it's magic' doesn't cut it as an answer either," she warned her friend.

Stella groaned. "So what does?"

"Lucy?" Lindsay leaned over the back of the sofa to address her daughter.

"Yes Mommy?"

"Remember what we said about magic spells in stories?"

Lucy nodded. "They're 'periments like you and Daddy do in the Lab, but they're special ones and they make special things happen."

"Yeah, that's right."

"So that's how the wicked witch turned the prince into a frog? With a 'periment?"

"Yep."

"Okay," Lucy nodded in satisfaction. She turned and looked at Stella. "My Daddy turned a frog into a prince once," she told her confidently.

"He did?" Stella looked distinctly dubious at this.

Lucy nodded vigorously, her pigtails bobbing. "With a 'periment," she declared.

Stella looked towards her colleague for assistance. Lindsay shook her head. "Don't ask, I have no idea."

"But I'm intrigued…"

"So ask Danny, super Dad extraordinaire," Lindsay said and then turned her attention to her daughter. "You hungry, sweetie? It's nearly time for lunch."

"Can I have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?" Lucy asked, clambering down from the couch and following her Mom through into the kitchen.

"How about peanut butter and banana?" Lindsay suggested, trying to aim for something a little healthier.

Fortunately, Lucy was in an amiable mood that day. "Okay," she agreed. "Is Daddy at work?" she asked after a beat.

Lindsay nodded. "Yes honey, but I'm sure he'll call you before bedtime. He always does, doesn't he?" She could trust Danny not to forget. Even when he was snowed under at the Lab, he always found time to call his daughter.

"Does he know we're living at Auntie Stella's now?" Lucy enquired, a little frown appearing between her eyebrows. "He will know where to pick me up from, won't he, Mommy?" she asked worriedly.

"Of course he will," Lindsay assured her daughter.

"I think he might be coming round to visit later actually," Stella said from the doorway.

"He is?" Lindsay asked in surprise.

"Didn't he tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"The clean-up crew's going to your apartment today. He and Flack were going along to supervise and make sure they don't miss anything. He said he'd bring over what they manage to salvage this evening some time."

"But I thought he was on shift today," Lindsay said.

"Mac let him take a few hours off." Stella told her. "If things are quiet enough at the Lab, he said he'd release Hawkes to help out too."

"Oh!" Lindsay's eyes filled with moisture at her friends' thoughtfulness towards her.

She hadn't really felt up to going to the apartment herself. As a civilian she wouldn't have been allowed to anyway, but her position as a trained CSI would have gained her access if she wished it. With Danny there, there was no chance of anything getting missed however, so there was no need to put herself through the unpleasant ordeal now. She knew he'd know exactly what was most important to her personally, and she also knew that Hawkes would see to the more practical matters of crockery, kitchen equipment and various other household items too. A single tear of gratitude slid like a rain-drop down her cheek.

"Don't cry, Mommy!"

She started a little as Lucy wrapped her arms around her upper thighs and buried her face against her stomach, hugging her tightly. Lindsay felt the guilt wash through her immediately. However hard she tried to keep her daughter shielded from her emotional troubles, Lucy was not stupid. She was almost precociously bright, as well as extremely affectionate in nature. Lindsay wasn't quite sure how she and Danny – the Queen and King of Reticence – had managed to produce such an open and loving child to be honest. She imagined they could both learn a lot from their little girl about expressing emotions. She wore her heart on her sleeve and wasn't afraid to show when she was happy or sad.

Gently freeing herself from Lucy's grasp, she knelt down so that she was eye-level with her little girl. "It's okay, sweetie," she said, stroking her hand over her daughter's shock of honey-blonde hair.

"I don't like it when you cry."

"I know you don't, baby. But Mommy's not sad, she's just a little overwhelmed because everyone is being so kind to us at the moment."

"Because of the fire?"

"Yes, because of the fire. It was a very bad thing to happen and we're really lucky that we have so many good friends who are willing to help us out. We have to figure out a way to say a big special thank-you to them all."

"We could make cupcakes," Lucy suggested.

Lindsay smiled. "You know what? I think that's a great idea. How about we make some this afternoon, huh? Then you can come into the Lab with Mommy tomorrow and give them out to everybody."

Lucy nodded in enthusiasm. "But Daddy can have one tonight when he comes," she decided.

Lindsay laughed. "Only one?"

"Yes 'cus if we let him have more, he'll eat them all and they'll be none left!" Lucy declared dramatically.

"She knows him too well," Stella remarked with a laugh.

Lindsay nodded and planted a kiss on her daughter's lips. "Ok, sweetie. Go and wash your hands so we can have lunch, and then we'll go shopping for the cupcake ingredients."

"Did you want anything?" she enquired of Stella as Lucy obediently scampered off in the direction of the bathroom.

"What? Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?" Stella asked with some amusement.

"Sorry – we're kind of taking over, aren't we?" Lindsay said with a grimace. "We'll be out of here as soon as the insurance money comes through, I promise you."

"Lindsay," Stella admonished. "There's no rush for you to move out. I like having you here."

"You won't when you've just worked a double-shift and Lucy is insistent on playing dress-up, believe me," Lindsay told her acidly.

Stella laughed. "She's so adorable; I think I'd forgive her even that," she said. "Seriously though, you can stay as long as you need to, and I don't just mean for financial reasons, okay?"

Lindsay shot her a somewhat teary smile. "I think you just earned yourself at least two cupcakes," she said with a slight tremor in her voice.

"Well, as long as they're chocolate ones," Stella replied, coming around to Lindsay's side of the counter and giving her a quick hug.

"And I mean it," she said firmly when she drew back. "You and Lucy can stay for as long as you like. If at any time you're outstaying your welcome then I'll let you know, okay?"

Lindsay nodded. "Okay."

"Good," Stella said with nod, and then turned towards the refrigerator. "Now I may give the PB&J a miss," she said as she pulled open the door. "But a nice Chicken Caesar salad sounds wonderfully tempting right about now."

"Ahh," Lindsay remarked lightly. "Adult food. I think I've almost forgotten what that is. Since Danny moved out, it's just been easier to eat whatever I'm making for Lucy."

"Well, I think it's about time we changed that," Stella decided. "I've got more than enough for two. Sound good?"

Lindsay nodded with a hint of a smile. "Sounds good," she concurred.

**OOOOOO**

The bedroom was nearly clear. There was only the bottom two drawers of the dresser left to sort through. In spite of the open window bringing in occasional wafts of fresh air from outside, the pervading scent of damp and smoke was making Danny feel sick to the stomach. The sooner he got out of here the better, he decided.

Kneeling down on the floor in front of the dresser, he lifted the last two drawers completely out of their slots and carried them across to the bed to sort through. One was filled to the brim with newborn baby clothes, which gave Danny yet another painful jolt of remembrance as he recalled Lindsay folding and packing them all in there when Lucy had been somewhere around the six month mark.

"They're still in good condition," she'd said when he'd questioned why she was keeping them. "They can be re-used for our next baby when he or she arrives."

He'd grinned. "What happened to 'she's going to be an only child because I'm never doing that again'?" he'd said, quoting her comment to Mac in the hospital just a few hours after Lucy's birth.

"I may have changed my mind," she'd replied, throwing an enigmatic smile over her shoulder at him. "It's a woman's prerogative after all."

"Well, we do make cute kids so it would seem a shame to deprive the world of another," he'd said. "Maybe we should give them a little more time to get used to Mini-Messer Number One first though."

Lindsay had nodded in agreement. "A couple of years should do it, I think," she'd decided.

Of course, a couple of years later, their marriage hadn't been in any kind of state to be thinking of bringing another child into it…

Danny sighed and began carefully packing the clothes into an empty crate. He had no idea whether Lindsay still wanted to keep them, but she'd not cleared out the drawer thus far so it would appear that she was still holding out hope of becoming a mother again at some point in the future. Whether he would be the father of that child remained to be seen however.

Dumping the empty drawer on the floor, he pulled the other towards him and began to sort through its contents. It was mostly filled with nightwear - ranging in style from comfortable PJ's to flimsy negligees. Right at the back however, was a neat row of leather and velvet-covered boxes. Picking up a square one in the middle of the row, he flipped open the lid and looked at the delicate silver-link bracelet that lay inside. He'd bought it for Lindsay the Christmas after Lucy had turned one.

Taking out and opening some of the other boxes, he realised that they contained a variety of different jewellery from the expensively elegant to the more reasonably priced unusual – all of them presents from himself at varying points in their relationship. Lindsay had kept them all – every last one, right down to the somewhat tacky mood ring that he'd bought for her from a Flea Market in Brooklyn only a few weeks after they'd become lovers.

"It's so I know whether I'm going to get lucky or not," he'd told her jokingly as he'd slid it onto her finger.

She'd swatted him in protest, but then had belied the gesture by sliding her arms around his neck and fixing her lips to his in a long, slow smooch that pushed the borders of what was acceptable on a public street.

"You don't need a mood ring to tell you that," she'd told him when she'd eventually released him from her silken grasp. Her voice was as smooth as molasses and it had stirred his lust almost as much as the kiss had.

"Apparently not," he'd said a little hoarsely. "So - your place or mine?"

She'd giggled rather wickedly. "Yours is closer."

"Mine it is then…"

Danny shook his head with a wry chuckle. They'd barely made it past the threshold before the passion had taken over. They had ended up making fast, frantic love against the front door in a frenzy of fervent need. They'd been beside themselves in their want for one another back then. They'd waited so long to consummate the desire that had been brewing between them for nearly two years that every time felt like the first time for them. This had continued for perhaps the first eight months or so of their relationship until Ruben Sandoval's death had put an end to that carefree existence and had thrown their entire world into a chaotic mess of confusion and pain.

With a resigned sigh, Danny reached for one of the smaller pack-boxes meant for valuables and transferred all the jewellery boxes from the bottom of the drawer into it until there were only two left: a small, distinctive blue box, which was as familiar to him as his own face, and an oblong leather case that he didn't immediately recognise. He reached for the smaller of the two first and couldn't resist the urge to open it and look inside. As expected, nestled within was Lindsay's wedding band, alongside the engagement ring that he'd bought her as an anniversary present, a year into their short-lived marriage.

He couldn't recall exactly when the idea had first occurred to him, all he knew was that several months before their first wedding anniversary he'd hit upon the inspiration of buying her a ring. They'd done everything else backwards so why not this? Pregnancy, then marriage, followed by a belated engagement was a completely topsy-turvy way to go about it, but it was certainly very them. Once he'd set his heart upon it of course, he knew that not just any ring would do – he had to go for the ultimate, and that meant a little forward planning.

For several months, he'd scrimped and saved to achieve his goal, and had then pondered long and hard over his choice before finally taking Stella along for a second opinion. He didn't want to get it wrong so a woman's judgement on his selection was paramount before he passed over his credit card and parted with his hard-earned money. Much to his relief, his choice had passed muster with his friend and colleague. He couldn't have gone through the agony of choosing again. It had been a stressful enough endeavour the first time around.

"Well, I would have gone for that one," Stella had told him, pointing out a ring at the back of the display that was a little more ostentatious than the one he'd chosen for his wife, not to mention considerably above his price-range. "But," she added with a smile. "You're not married to me and the one you've chosen is so totally Lindsay… small and beautifully set. You did good, kid," she said, kissing him lightly on the cheek. "She's going to love it."

On the morning of their wedding anniversary he had been over-the-top nervous – even more so than he had been on the previous two occasions he'd proposed to her. He had no idea why – I mean it wasn't as if she was going to refuse, was it? He'd been planning on waiting until later on in the day to give her his gift, but his nerves hadn't been able to take it. Thankfully, Lindsay had been just as eager as he to exchange anniversary presents…

"_Me first," __she said, placing a small pile of beautifully wrapped packages on the bed in front of him._

_They were Lucy-less for once, thanks to Stella who had forcibly commandeered the ten-month old for two nights and the intervening day. Danny knew that his wife was a little wary of being parted from their baby for so long, but he also knew that she was looking forward to some time alone with him as well. _

_Smiling at the anticipatory gleam in her big brown eyes, he opened his gifts to find a glossy coffee-table book on Harley Davidson's, a vintage baseball card that he knew she must have searched high and low for, plus two pairs of tickets – one set - prime seats at the Giants next game, and the other to a show on Broadway – a kind of his, followed by her night out on the town. _

"_Thanks babe," he said, leaning for__ward and kissing her soundly. Drawing back, he studied the baseball card again. "I can't believe you found this."_

_She__ beamed, glad that her gifts had been a success. "So hand it over," she said cheekily, holding out her hands like Oliver Twist asking for more food. _

_He laughed and reached into the top drawer of the nightstand to withdraw the box within a box. "I've kind of veered away from the 'paper' theme," he warned before he passed it to her. _

"_You got the reference then," she said delightedly._

"_A book, baseball card, tickets – all varying forms of paper – it was kind of hard to miss."_

"_Yes, but men don't usually know these things."_

"_You mean that paper is traditional name for the first wedding anniversary? I'm a new man, babe."_

"_Yeah right," Lindsay scoffed, "Only when it suits in my experience. The rest of the time there are definite caveman tendencies on show, Mr Messer."_

"_Did you want this present or not?" he enquired jokingly, pretending affront at the mock insult._

_She __laughed. "Gimme," she said. "And it's okay about the paper thing, I know you're not Mr Traditional."_

_Danny __smiled at that. "Well, this is definitely in keeping with that theme," he said before he finally handed his gift over. _

"_Danny!" Lindsay gasped when she opened the outer box to discover the telltale blue box hidden within. _

"_Open it," he urged._

_She did so and her eyes immediately filled to the brim with unabashed emotion. "Oh!" she said shakily. "Oh! It's beautiful!"_

"_Well, I figured we did everything else backwards so why not this?" he said as he removed the ring from the box and slid the square-cut Tiffany diamond solitaire onto her finger. _

"_I know but… Tiffany's Danny?"_

"_Only the best for my girl and this is New York." He grinned. "I guess I'm just lucky I chose a wife with dainty fingers who could never have carried off a big ring, huh?"_

_Lindsay laughed helplessly at that before throwing he__r arms around his neck and peppering his face with kisses. "I love you," she whispered._

"_I love you too," __he returned, "But I'm thinking you still owe me another present."_

"_I do?" Lindsay enquired with faux innocence as he deliberately pushed her back against the pillows, his intent obvious. "But I didn't buy you anything else."_

"_Doesn't matter," he__ said as he pushed her nightdress up past her hips to expose her smooth belly. He bent to press a delicate kiss to the soft skin there, making her stomach muscles twitch in reaction. "I'll just un-wrap you…"_

Danny shut the ring box with a snap to stop the flood of memories. He didn't know why he was agonising over every little thing that he packed into the boxes. Where exactly was it getting him? All it did was remind him just how badly things had gone wrong between them.

He grabbed the last box, determined to just pack it and be done with it, but the weight of it had him pausing in curiosity. It was too heavy for the necklace it looked like it contained, and it didn't look at all familiar to him either. Unable to resist the temptation to look, he flipped it open and felt his heart jump inside his chest.

It didn't contain jewellery; it contained a watch – a _man's_ watch. Inexplicable jealousy surged in his veins. Who the hell was she buying a watch for? It didn't look like anything she'd buy for her father – it wasn't remotely the older man's style – and it was a little over the top of a present for either of her two brothers. It was the kind of watch a woman bought for her lover.

Sliding his fingers beneath the cool metal band, he removed the watch from its box. From the weight of it, it was clearly an original and not some cheap knock-off. Turning it over, he bent his head to inspect the hallmark and that's when he saw the engraving on the back: '_For Danny, Happy 36__th__, 1 4 3 4evr, Lindsay x'_

It took him a moment to work out the significance of the '1 4 3', but his scientist's brain provided him with the answer quicker than most: 1.4.3. – I love you – the numbers the number of letters in each word. 1 4 3 4evr – I love you forever.

Turning around, he slid to the floor, his back against the side of the bed and his legs bent at the knees. His 36th birthday – the one he'd spent – after a brief visit from Mac with Lucy earlier on in the day – alone and getting slowly and steadily drunk in Flack's spare room. It had finally dawned on him that his separation from Lindsay was not a temporary one as he'd first believed. He would not be returning home to the bosom of his family anytime soon. All he could see in the future was a lifetime of part-time fatherhood and acute loneliness without the woman he loved beside him.

Something inside of him that he hadn't known was there cracked in two and he buried his face against his knees in a gesture of abject despair. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he lamented. How could he have been so god damn stupid? He understood what this present had meant – he and Lindsay had never been the kind of couple who bought each other ridiculously excessive gifts. It was the thought that counted, and he knew that she had loved that silly mood ring he'd bought her just as much as any of the more luxurious presents he'd bestowed upon her since then.

He'd gone out on a limb with the Tiffany engagement ring and she, in turn, had apparently done the same with this. The watch was classy, well-made and clearly constructed to last a lifetime. And that, he assumed, was precisely the point. His birthday had only been a couple of months after that fateful night at Sullivan's, and he knew without knowing how he knew that she'd bought this gift shortly before then. It had been her commitment to working through their troubles – just the two of them, side by side, for a lifetime. 1 4 3 4evr – I love you forever.

Why had he not removed himself from a situation that he knew would most likely get him into hot water? He'd been uncomfortable with it from the start, especially when the second of the women had fixated on him rather than Don. Not that Flack was exactly single at the time either, but at least he wasn't married with a child. He and whatever her name was had only been dating a few weeks.

In his defence, he'd been pretty clear about his lack of interest and marital status, but he should have known that after a few drinks that was hardly going to be seen as an obstacle by a woman who only really cared about the thrill of the chase, and would be gone in a flash once the exhilarating moment of capture had passed.

Not that he was ever going to let himself be caught, of course, but that wasn't really the point. Lindsay should have trusted him, but equally, he should have been more careful about the image he was projecting. He hadn't wanted to rock the boat that was the thing. Marty had been enjoying the attention and Flack had been encouraging his friend like men with no real ties had a tendency to do. He should have left them to it and gone back and joined the others at the bar. Except he hadn't, and that decision had turned the tide of his whole life in ways he could never have imagined.

Raising his head, he brushed away the tears he hadn't realised he'd shed and then rose stiffly to his feet. Putting the watch back in its case, he placed it alongside the other boxes and then closed the lid on the pack-box. He wasn't sure whether he should mention his discovery to Lindsay. It could open a can of worms that neither of them were prepared to deal with right now.

On the other hand though, it would undoubtedly be a place to start. He just had to decide for certain whether that was a road that he wanted to travel again…

_**To be continued…**_

_**A/N2: **__Just as a bit of useless trivia – the first two flashbacks Danny experiences in this chapter are actually slightly re-worked scenes from a story I started to write over a year ago about Lindsay's trip home to Montana and how she and Danny coped with being separated from each other during the latter stages of her pregnancy. Although I liked some of the stuff I wrote, it never really quite came together as a complete story so I eventually abandoned it. It's nice to use some of the best bits here though – means the hard work hasn't gone completely to waste. I've figured out a way to weave in some of Lindsay's POV later on in the story too, so watch out for that._

_Oh and I know there'__s a children's story called the Princess and the Frog, but I just made it up here – any similarities/differences to the real thing are purely coincidental therefore. Most fairy-tales follow a similar theme, I've noticed, so I imagine it may be quite close to the original._


	8. Home Calling

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi everyone! New chapter for you. This part is ever so slightly shorter than normal, but the next one is just that little bit longer to make up for it! It was just where the scene breaks naturally fell.

Also, I have the day off today so you're in luck - another Friday update :-) Hope you enjoy!

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 8**__** – Home Calling**_

_**Later that same day…**_

"It's Daddy, it's Daddy!" Lucy cried out excitedly, leaping to her feet and inadvertently knocking over her carefully constructed tower of bricks at the sound of the doorbell chimes. "Open the door, Auntie Stella, open the door!" she said, hopping impatiently from one foot to the other as if her shoes were on fire.

Lindsay sighed as her friend obediently rose to answer the door. Lucy had been on tenterhooks for over an hour waiting for Danny to arrive. It was going to be a nightmare to settle her off to sleep tonight. It was clear her little girl was in one of her hyper-energetic moods. The only trouble with that was the predictable slump that came afterwards - a happenstance that usually led to her daughter becoming cranky, awkward and out-of-sorts. Generally she was good-natured child, but she could throw one almighty temper tantrum when she put her mind to it and Lindsay wasn't sure she had the energy to deal with that kind of battle tonight.

"Uh-oh!" Danny remarked as he accepted his daughter's enthusiastic greetings just inside the doorway to the apartment. "Someone's wired tonight."

He looked across at Lindsay and saw her attempt a wan smile in return. She still looked tired, he thought, but at least she had a bit more colour in her cheeks today.

Flack came through the door then, carrying one of the crates that he, Danny and Hawkes had packed up earlier, and Lucy immediately transferred her exuberant attentions to her father's closest friend. "Hi! Uncle Flack! Hi!" she greeted high-spiritedly.

"Hi M&M!" he said with a smile as he set the crate down on the floor.

"I'm not an M&M," Lucy told him in protest.

"Yes, you are," he replied. "You're a Mini-Messer – that's M&M."

Lucy giggled. "You're silly," she proclaimed.

"That's what all the girls tell me," he quipped, and then swooped down to plant a buzz of a kiss on her cheek which only made her childish giggles more pronounced.

"I assume it's me who is carting up the other two of those from the car," he said to Danny when he straightened up. He nodded at the crate in the corner near the door.

His friend grinned beatifically at him. "Well, if you're offering…"

"Only three?" Lindsay said in dismay as Flack headed back out the door, muttering under his breath about lazy-ass CSIs who didn't know the meaning of hard work. "That was all that was left?"

"The others are at my place," Danny quickly explained. "With the three of you living here, I didn't think you'd want them cluttering up the space. These are mainly clothes and stuff, plus a selection of Lucy's toys. You can sort through the rest whenever you're feeling up to it. Just let me know and I'll give you a key."

Lindsay nodded, relieved that her belongings hadn't been completely decimated by the fire. "Okay, thanks," she said gratefully.

"No problem," Danny responded with an incline of his head.

"We made cupcakes, Daddy," Lucy brightly informed her father then, slipping her hand into his to pull his attention back to her.

He smiled down at her. "You did?"

"Yes!" She nodded vigorously. "To say thank-you to everyone for being so nice. I'm taking them into the Lab tomorrow with Mommy, but you can have one now if you like."

"I'm privileged, huh?" Danny claimed with a self-satisfied grin.

Lindsay rolled her eyes at the smug expression on his face. "As if you didn't know she thinks the sun shines out of your ass," she observed tartly.

"Mommy! You said a bad word!" Lucy exclaimed, her blue eyes growing wide and as round as golf-balls in reaction.

Danny laughed. "Well, now you've done it," he said. "What do you say, kid? Do you think Mommy should do a 'time out'?"

"Danny! Don't encourage her," Lindsay lambasted him.

"Mommy can't do a time out," Lucy told her father, her tone indicating that she thought everyone should know that.

"She can't? Why not?" he enquired.

"Because she'd be sitting there for-like-EVER!" Lucy explained, throwing her arms wide to illustrate her point.

"Huh?" Danny looked confused at that.

Lindsay laughed. "One minute for every year of your age," she said, reminding him of the time-out rules. "And Mommy wouldn't be sitting there quite as long as Daddy," she added slyly, winking at her daughter.

"Hey!" Danny protested as Lucy giggled.

"You're right though, sweetie," Lindsay said, kneeling down in front of her little girl, her tone serious now. "Mommy did say a bad word and that was very naughty of her. I think that means she's going to have to do without a cupcake tonight, don't you?"

Lucy nodded solemnly in agreement. "But you can have one tomorrow," she said in appeasement.

Lindsay smiled and leaned forward to kiss her daughter fondly. "Now," she said firmly. "I know Daddy has come to visit, but you do know it's bath and bedtime soon, right?"

Lucy wrinkled her nose. "Already?" she complained.

"Yes, already," her mother said, poking her lightly in the ribs. "We don't want any grumpy girls at the Lab tomorrow, do we?"

Lucy shook her head. "No, Uncle Mac wouldn't like that," she said.

Danny chuckled. "Well, at least she knows who's boss," he remarked, exchanging a quick grin with an equally amused Stella.

"Can Daddy do my bath?" Lucy asked her mother.

Lindsay nodded. "Sure, baby."

"And you too," the little girl added, suddenly realising the golden opportunity that had been presented to her. Both of her parents in the same place at the same time was a rarity, and it would be stupid of her not to take full advantage of the situation.

Danny and Lindsay exchanged a slightly uncomfortable look, but neither one of them could deny their daughter what she wanted. "We can do that," Lindsay decided after Danny had silently indicated his agreement with an imperceptible nod of his head.

Lucy beamed in triumph. "Yay! Can we have milk and cupcakes now?" she asked plaintively. "I'm hungry."

"Did someone mention cupcakes?"

Flack's disembodied voice echoed from behind the two crates he carried, one balanced precariously on top of the other. Danny hurried over to lift the top one down before disaster struck.

"You can only have one," Lucy told him sternly. "You too, Daddy. You're not allowed to eat them all."

Flack's eyebrows rose. "Well, that told us," he observed to his friend. "She may look like butter wouldn't melt, but she's definitely in possession of the extra X chromosome, isn't she, huh?"

"And I'll pretend I didn't hear that," Stella said as she bent to pick up her purse from the floor near the sofa. "Now, boys and girls, I'm going to have to love you and leave you, I'm afraid. It's time I went to work."

"At night-time?" Lucy asked, her mouth turning down at the corners.

"Someone has to do it, kiddo," Stella told the little girl in an apologetic tone.

"Mommy and Daddy don't," Lucy said with a pout. "We're having cupcakes," she added as an extra incentive for Stella to stay.

"Actually Daddy does have to," Danny said, stepping in to avert the brewing temper tantrum. "Mommy too in fact - except she only works at night-time when you're staying overnight with me."

"'Cus she has to be at home to look after me the other times," Lucy informed him knowledgeably.

"Exactly," Danny concurred. "Now be a good girl and give Auntie Stella a kiss before she goes," he instructed, his low tone suggesting that if she objected there'd be trouble.

Cowed but still a little put out at the loss of one of her captive audience, Lucy obliged, and then followed her parents through into the kitchen to claim the milk and cupcakes on offer.

"Hey!" Stella said, reaching out to catch Flack's arm as he made a move to follow them. "Don't stay too long, okay?"

"I won't be a third wheel, Stell'" he assured her, "But only a mad man passes up the offer of cupcakes – especially when they're baked by a certain country girl from Montana. I swear she sprinkles fairy dust inside them or something."

Having tasted one that very afternoon, Stella could only agree. The girl could bake that was for sure. "All right, just don't outstay your welcome, okay? Give them some time alone, they need it."

"I know," Don replied, his tone completely serious now. "Something happened with Danny at the apartment this afternoon. I couldn't tell you what exactly, but something definitely shifted inside of him. Maybe it was being confronted with all those memories, I don't know. Whatever it was, he seems different somehow, more introspective. I'm hoping that's a good sign, even though I feel a little guilty for saying it because it rather puts Rachel out in the cold if it turns out to be true. She _is_ supposed to be my friend after all."

"As are Danny and Lindsay," Stella pointed out, "And one of them was always going to get hurt, Don. For Lucy's sake, I think it's important that Danny and Lindsay give this their best shot."

Flack nodded in agreement. "I know. I can still feel sorry for Rachel though, can't I? She didn't deserve this and she was the one who pulled Danny out of the black hole he was in. In a weird kind of way, his relationship with her has probably improved the chances of reconciliation between him and Lindsay. I think if he was still in the same place emotionally as he was six or seven months ago, the odds on them working this thing out would be a lot less attractive. One of them has to be in control, and Linds is all over the place at the moment so it was never going to be her, was it?"

Stella shook her head. "No, but she's doing a little better, I think. She's still very quiet, but she seems more upbeat than she did in the hospital."

"Well, fingers crossed that continues," Flack said, before a little voice called out to him from the kitchen.

"Uncle Flack? You can have your cupcake now."

Flack grinned. "Looks like I'm being summoned," he said. "I'll see you later, yeah?"

Stella nodded and then pointed her forefinger at him. "Half an hour, tops," she instructed.

"Yes ma'am," he said, saluting her smartly before going through into the kitchen to claim his reward for a hard afternoon's work.

**OOOOOO**

An hour and a half later, a decidedly antsy Lindsay busied herself in the kitchen while Danny read their daughter a bedtime story. It had been a somewhat surreal experience to sit side-by-side on the bathroom floor while Lucy had the time of her life splashing in the tub. It was an experience they hadn't shared in a long time, and, sadly, it only emphasised the huge chasm that now existed between them.

Lindsay's stomach churned with apprehension. She knew that any minute now story-time would be over, and that they would then have to negotiate the first real test of the new understanding between them. In the past, Danny would have been getting ready to leave the moment Lucy was tucked up in bed, but they'd agreed at the hospital that they would not handle the transfer of parental responsibility in quite such a business-like manner as they had done previously. That meant making friendly conversation and Lindsay had no idea what to say, small talk would seem so banal under the circumstances.

She reached out and absently removed a cupcake from one of the Tupperware boxes that she'd just packed them into. Biting through the rich, buttery topping, she allowed the sweet chocolate-y mixture to melt on her tongue and soothe her frazzled nerves. It wasn't exactly the most efficient of stress-busting devices, but it took the edge off her anxiety all the same.

"I didn't think you were allowed one of those."

Lindsay jumped guiltily as Danny's amused voice floated in from the doorway. "She'll count them, you know," he observed as he moved further into the room.

"I'll just tell her the dog ate it," Lindsay said as she licked the chocolate icing from her fingers.

Danny laughed as he slid into one of the stools at the breakfast bar. "What dog?"

"The invisible one that only comes out at night while little girls are in bed."

Danny grinned. "You have such a poker-face, I think she might actually believe you."

Lindsay smiled back and then shifted uncomfortably as the awkwardness between them quickly returned. "Umm, did you want a beer or something?" she asked uneasily.

As discomfited as she, Danny nodded, his eyes fixed resolutely on the counter-top. "Yeah, yeah, that'd be good," he replied, trying to inject a note of normalcy into his tone.

Glancing over her shoulder at him, Lindsay caught the weary hand that he brushed over his face when he thought her back was turned. Looking a little closer, she realised that his face was slightly paler than normal and that deep stress-lines were marring the skin of his brow.

"You okay?" she asked as she handed the drink over.

"What?" His head shot up. "Umm, yeah, I…"

"It was rough today, huh?" she guessed. "At the apartment, I mean."

He nodded in agreement. "Yeah, it was my home too, you know, and to see it like that…" he trailed off and shrugged. "Brought back memories."

"Good or bad?" she found herself asking.

Danny's lips quirked at the question. "Strangely enough, mainly good," he told her.

"And that surprised you?" she surmised, her eyes steady on his face.

Uncomfortable with the question, he looked away from her insightful gaze. "No, it just… it made me realise…"

"How much of a mess we made of everything?" Lindsay interjected.

Danny sighed, his gaze downcast. "Yeah."

Silence descended – thick, heavy and impenetrable. Neither spoke, both unsure of the best way to break the impasse.

One part of Danny wanted to mention the watch that he'd found at the apartment that afternoon, but the other, less impulsive side of him realised that this wasn't really the time or the place for that. They were both tired and emotionally over-wrought from recent events. Plus, they needed to take some time to reflect on what they wanted personally before they tried to figure out how to negotiate this thing together.

Up until today, Danny had been torn between the present and the past – with the present having the stronger pull if he was being perfectly honest with himself. He was beginning to realise that however much his head might tell him that he should just let go and move on with his life though, his heart wasn't going to let him do so that easily. The plain fact of the matter was that he wanted this to work. He wanted Lindsay back in his life and it was useless trying to deny it.

Allowing things to develop with Rachel offered him an escape route, the potential of a solid future even, but his wife was the person he'd chosen to spend the rest of his life with when all was said and done. He therefore had to be absolutely certain that they couldn't make their marriage work before he turned his back on everything that they'd had together.

He took a contemplative sip of his beer and attempted to come up with something constructive to say, unfortunately drawing a complete blank in the process. The piercing jangle of a cell-phone ringing neatly avoided the increasingly pressing need to speak however. Saved by the bell, Danny thought wryly as Lindsay picked up her cell from the counter-top and looked at the flashing display.

"It's my Mom," she informed him as she lifted the phone to her ear and answered the call. "Hey Mom!" she said with forced brightness.

"Hey sweetie!" her Mom replied. "I tried calling your apartment, but the number came back as un-listed for some reason."

"Yeah, I, umm…" she stuttered, as she moved out of the kitchen and into the lounge to afford herself some privacy.

"Never mind, I've got hold of you now," her mother cut in, sweeping aside her rambling response. "Your Dad and I were just wondering what time your flight gets in."

Lindsay's mind went blank. "My flight?" she asked in confusion.

"Yes, next week. There's quite a lot to organise with the party and everything, but we want to make sure we pick you and Lucy up at the airport and not leave you to get a cab. You _are_ the guests of honour after all. Everyone is looking forward to your visit, you know. The kids are so excited about having their cousin around for a proper vacation, and your Dad is beside himself with all the plans he's made for the two of you. He was even talking about getting Lucy a pony the other day," she finished with a laugh.

Sinking down onto the sofa, Lindsay brought the heel of her hand to her forehead as it all came back to her. The anniversary party, of course. She'd forgotten all about it with everything that had been going on lately. Now that she looked back on it, she distinctly remembered telling her mother that she'd stay for a few weeks and not just a long weekend too. Back then, she'd wanted desperately to get away from New York, Danny and his new girlfriend and relax in the company of her family – the only people she trusted to love her without question.

"Honey, are you okay?" her Mom asked as she sensed her daughter's discomfort. "Is everything all right?"

"Something happened, Mom," Lindsay told her quietly

"And you're sure you and Lucy are all right?" her mother demanded anxiously once Lindsay had finished narrating the details of the fire to her.

"Yes, yes, we're fine. I mean, the doctor signed me off work for a couple of weeks, but I'm all right, I promise. I just… I forgot all about the party with all the upheaval, but look - I'll go online tomorrow and book our flights. I'll need to check with Mac about the vacation days, but I don't think it'll be a problem."

"Don't you have to ask Danny's permission before you take Lucy out of state?" her mother enquired.

"Umm, yeah – he's here now actually, so I'll ask him before he leaves."

There was a short pause and Lindsay could almost hear the cogs in her mother's brain whirring across the phone-line. 'Mommy radar,' as Danny so affectionately termed it, was a lovely thing when applied to her relationship with Lucy, but it was damned annoying when the shoe was on the other foot.

"Why do I get the impression that there's more to this than you're letting on?" her mother said. "You said the fire was a couple of days ago, but we talked about this vacation weeks ago now."

Lindsay sighed. "I know, I know. Let's just say things have been kind of difficult lately. But I don't really want to get into it over the phone. I'll tell you all about it when I see you, I promise."

"Difficult with Danny you mean."

Well, there was no getting anything past her mother, was there? Lindsay thought ruefully. Dog with a bone sprang to mind in fact.

"Something like that," she reluctantly admitted.

"Oh honey!" her mother breathed, sympathy radiating in every nuance of her voice.

Lindsay felt tears pricking at the back of her eyelids in reaction, and she had to bite her lip to keep them at bay. How was it that her Mom just knew without having to be told? "I made a mistake, Mom," she confessed a little tearfully. "And now I don't know how to take it back."

"Have you talked to him?"

"I… he knows, you know… and we're trying to work through it, but I just… I'm so afraid it's too late," she said dejectedly.

"Invite him to the party," her mother suggested.

"W-what?"

"Take some space, some time away from the city, away from everything that has the potential to come between you," her mother recommended. "Lucy is going to be kept plenty occupied so you'll have time to yourselves to talk things through."

"I'm not sure that's such a great idea, Mom," Lindsay returned. "We've been separated for a long time now, and all this has only really come to a head in the past couple of weeks. We're still trying to figure out how to deal with it. We're not at the point where we're ready to do anything about it yet."

"But you still love him?"

"Yes. Oh god, yes. I'm just not sure that's a two-way street anymore."

Before her mother had chance to respond, Lucy's plaintive cry from the bedroom interrupted their conversation. "Mom-mee!" she called out in a sing-song voice. "Mom-mee!"

"Is that Lucy?" her grandmother asked. "Isn't she in bed yet?"

"Yes," Lindsay replied. "She was kind of hyper tonight though. It was probably too much to hope for that she'd go down without a fuss."

"Mom-mee!" her daughter called out again. "I need you, Mom-mee!"

Lindsay glanced up as Danny came into the lounge from the kitchen. 'I'll see to her,' he mouthed and she nodded, responding with a silent 'thanks' before he headed down the hallway to the small box-room that had been cleared of junk for Lucy's use. A few moments later, she heard his firm voice quietly reprimanding their daughter for her behaviour.

"Sorry about that, Mom," Lindsay said, returning to her phone-call.

"Do you need to go?"

"No, no, Danny's seeing to her."

"So, about him coming to visit…"

"Mom…"

"Okay so I agree that a big family party and a long vacation is probably a bit too much under the circumstances, but how about a few days? I know enough about my grand-daughter to know that she's a complete Daddy's girl like her Mom…"

Lindsay smiled. "Well, that's true," she concurred.

"So, they're going to miss each other while you and Lucy are here with us."

"Yeah, yeah, they will."

"So maybe they'll both appreciate a short visit," her mother went on. "The weekend after the party maybe?"

Lindsay couldn't help but smile. "Are you sure you weren't a match-maker in a former incarnation?" she teased.

Her mother laughed. "That is quite possible, but my motives are totally above reproach on this. You are my daughter and I'm just trying to make life easier for you."

"I know, Mom," Lindsay said with simple affection. "Look - I'll suggest it to him, ok?"

"Good," her mother replied. "Now, I don't want to interrupt any more than I have done already so I'll leave you to it. We'll talk more tomorrow when you've sorted out your flights."

"Okay Mom. I love you."

"I love you too, honey. Bye."

"Bye."

Lindsay sighed as she pressed the red button to end the call. She didn't have much time for retrospection however, because Danny returned before she could put her thoughts into any kind of proper order.

"Has she settled down?" she asked for wont of something better to say.

Danny nodded as he seated himself in the armchair opposite. "I told her I wouldn't come and see her again if she continued to behave like a brat," he said calmly.

"You didn't!" Lindsay stared at him in shock.

He grinned. "No, of course not. I said she wouldn't be allowed to visit the Lab tomorrow if she didn't settle down and go to sleep – and that I'd tell Mac why she couldn't."

Lindsay nodded. "And how did that go across?"

"As expected," Danny replied, mimicking their daughter hastily pulling the bedclothes up to her chin and squeezing her eyes tightly shut.

Lindsay laughed. Mac was actually a great big softie where his god-daughter was concerned, but he couldn't turn off the military bearing he seemed to have been born with for love nor money. Lucy had somehow picked up on the inherent authority in that and her biggest fear was disappointing him. Both Lindsay and Danny had quickly learned that Mac was an excellent deterrent against mutiny in the ranks therefore. The ubiquitous 'wait till your father gets home' had been transplanted by 'wait till I tell Uncle Mac' in their household.

"Your parents okay?" Danny enquired then.

Lindsay nodded. "Yeah, umm… it's their wedding anniversary next weekend."

"Forty years this year, right?" Danny said, recollecting a conversation at Thanksgiving a couple of years before. "Weren't they planning a big family get-together to celebrate?"

"Yes – Mom was just ringing me to find out about our flights – I'd forgotten all about it with everything that's been happening. You're okay with me taking Lucy, aren't you?"

"Shouldn't I be?"

"I'm supposed to ask your permission, remember?"

"Oh yeah," Danny said, recalling the terms of the interim custody agreement. "I didn't put that clause in there, you know. Matt insisted upon it. He said I was being naïve assuming that you'd never take Lucy away from me." He shrugged. "Lawyers – they're endlessly paranoid."

Lindsay smiled briefly. "I guess it happens," she said. "Umm – I kind've said that we'd stay for a few weeks," she told him.

"How many weeks?" Danny asked.

"Nearly three," Lindsay explained almost apologetically. "I was hoping to fly out middle of next week and return two weeks next weekend. I know it's a long time, but they don't get to see Lucy very often and…"

"It's okay," Danny cut in. "I understand. Doesn't mean I have to like it though, does it? It's gonna be hard to be apart from Lucy for that long, and you and me – we have things to talk about, Linds."

"I know," Lindsay said. "Mom… she… err… she suggested you come and visit too. She knows how much you and Lucy are going to miss each other."

Danny's eyes widened at that. "Your practically ex-husband at her fortieth wedding anniversary party?" he said incredulously. "Seriously? For real?"

"Well, she agreed that might be a bit awkward. She was thinking more the weekend after... Look, you don't have to if you're not comfortable with it, but the offer's there, okay?"

Danny nodded. "I'll think about it," he said.

Lindsay felt some of the tension inside her subside. At least it wasn't a straight 'no'. The more she thought about it, the more she felt it might do them good to take a break from the unrelenting march of their daily lives. Maybe her mother was being a little optimistic about the outcome of that respite, but it was worth a try at least. She just hoped that Danny felt the same way.

"I should go," he said then, glancing at his watch and rising to his feet. "I'm on shift at eight tomorrow."

"Oh, okay," she said, disappointment coiling low in her belly as she followed him to the door.

It was the space and time that she'd asked for, but part of her just yearned to feel his arms around her again – if only for a brief, fleeting moment. She told herself it was only because she was so terribly lonely, but deep inside she knew it was more than that. Only Danny's arms would do, anyone else's would be a poor substitute. This was the man that she loved; all she wanted was to be certain that he loved her back. Unfortunately, she couldn't be sure of that right now and because of that, her heart would have to remain an empty shell.

"Linds, I…" Danny broke off with a resigned sigh. There was so much he wanted to say but he couldn't find the words.

Reaching out, he lightly touched the tips of his fingers to the apple of her cheek instead, hoping that the gesture communicated at least some of what he was feeling. "I'll see you tomorrow," he finished weakly.

Lindsay nodded, her heart in her throat and her skin tingling from his touch. "Yeah, tomorrow," she echoed, and then stood in the doorway and silently watched him leave.

_**To be continued…**_

_A/N2: I know this chapter was __a bit filler-y (is that a word?). Unfortunately, it was necessary to set up the next bit of the story. Hopefully there was enough character interaction to keep it interesting though. The next part is much more eventful, I promise! _

_Till next time then… CharmedBec x_


	9. The Guest of Honour

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi all! New chapter for you. Because everyone has been commenting on them, I realised I've written quite a lot of flashbacks into this story – there are more again in this chapter. I'm not sure it was entirely intentional, but it's turning out to be the best mechanism for providing our hero and heroine with some food for thought. Remembering how things used to be definitely seems to be having an effect on them…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 9**__** – The Guest of Honour**_

_**The following day…**_

"So, when's the royal visit?" Sheldon Hawkes enquired, as he and Danny worked either side of the evidence table analyzing various bits of trace from their crime scene.

The latter grinned. "I'm not sure, but knowing Lucy she's been bugging Lindsay since dawn about coming into the Lab today."

"And how _is _Lindsay?" Sheldon asked.

Danny hesitated, thinking back over the previous evening before replying. It had been phenomenally awkward and oddly comfortable all at the same time. Lindsay had been a bit subdued, but he no longer felt like she was going to fly off the handle at any minute. She seemed a lot calmer and much more in control of herself and her emotions. He didn't know whether that was due to the pills she'd been prescribed, or simply because admitting her problems had helped her turn some kind of a personal corner. Probably a combination of both, he reasoned.

"She's doing better, I think," he told his friend. "But to be honest, Hawkes, I couldn't really tell you. Everything's still so up in the air between us at the moment. I want to help her, but it's not that easy with our relationship the way it is. Stella is probably the better one to ask to be honest."

"Stella's probably the better one to ask what?" her voice said from behind them.

"How Lindsay's doing," Danny explained to their tumble-haired colleague as she joined them.

"Well, she's kind of quiet," Stella said. "Compared to Little Miss Lucy Chatterbox anyway, but I think that's to be expected under the circumstances."

"Depression doesn't just go away overnight," Hawkes concurred with a solemn nod. "It could take weeks, months even, for her to get back to normal." He looked over at Danny. "You shouldn't expect too much," he warned. "She'll need time and it won't all be plain sailing."

Danny shook his head with a wry smile. "This is Lindsay and me, Doc, it's never been plain sailing, but I understand where you're coming from. It's frustrating sometimes, but I'm not going to push it. Everything in its own time, huh?"

Hawkes nodded. "Everything in its own time," he agreed.

"So – have our cupcakes arrived yet?" Stella enquired, rubbing her hands together in anticipation. "After a long night-shift, I'm in desperate need of a sugar rush to keep me going."

"Shouldn't you have left an hour ago?" Danny asked, glancing at his watch.

Stella nodded. "Yes, but I'm waiting on some results from DNA, and I couldn't miss Princess Lucy's visit, could I? The whole Lab is waiting with bated breath for her arrival, you know."

Danny laughed. "We're supposed to be a professional team," he said. "She's a four year old girl and she's got everyone wrapped around her little finger."

"You and Lindsay shouldn't have created such an adorable little poppet between you then, should you?" Stella playfully chastised him.

"Yeah, well, it wasn't exactly planned," Danny said with a shrug. "I guess fate has a way of giving you exactly what you didn't know you wanted though, huh?" he finished with a smile.

Stella smiled back at him. "So you don't have any regrets?" she asked.

"Oh, I have lots of regrets," Danny told her, "But my daughter definitely isn't one of them."

"And your wife?"

Danny sighed. "I regret the way things turned out between us, but I don't regret marrying her if that's what you're asking. She changed my life in so many ways, and a big part of me still loves her more than I've ever loved any other woman in my entire life. It's just that I had to shut that part of me away in order to survive, and now… well, now, it's not so easy to open that locked door if you want to know the truth."

"Because you're afraid of what's on the other side?"

"I think we're both afraid of that, Stella," Danny replied. "In some ways, I guess that's always been our problem. We're so afraid of what's on the other side, we choose not to look."

"But that's changing, isn't it?"

Danny shrugged. "I hope so. It's a little too early to tell to be honest." He sucked in a deep breath and let it go. "She wants me to fly out to Montana for a few days while she's visiting her family," he said. "She says it's just for Lucy but…" He shook his head. "I don't know."

"You think there's more to it?" Hawkes asked.

Danny nodded. "Yes, and I get where she's coming from, but it's not going to be the most comfortable of situations – not with her family there and everything. I'm pretty certain I'm persona non grata where the Monroe clan is concerned right now."

"But she wouldn't have invited you if they hadn't agreed to it, surely?" Stella said.

"She said it was her Mom's idea," Danny answered. "And I guess it might be – I always got on best with her. Her Dad and her brothers though – they're like Lindsay's personal bodyguard so the defences are definitely going to be up with them. And Mel would probably rip me a new one too given half the chance," he finished, referring to Lindsay's formidable elder sister.

"So you're going to let that put you off?" Stella challenged. "I thought you had more guts than that, Messer."

"Reverse psychology – nice," Hawkes remarked mildly.

Stella shot him a grin. "Works every time with stubborn New Yorkers," she told him. "Doesn't it?" she demanded of Danny, pinning him to the spot with her steely gaze.

He sighed in defeat. "I'll think about it, okay?" he capitulated. "And if I do decide not to go, it won't be because I'm too afraid to face my in-laws, I promise you."

Stella nodded in satisfaction. "Well good because I'd be incredibly disappointed in you if it was."

She paused for a moment, deciding it was probably best to change the subject at this point. Danny didn't like being backed into a corner, he always came out fighting when that happened and she wasn't sure that was necessarily the best course of action here.

"Now tell me something," she said in a lighter, more conversational tone. "Exactly how do you turn a frog into a prince?"

"Huh?" Danny looked at her like she'd gone mad.

"Lucy reliably informs me that her Daddy can turn a frog into a prince," Stella told him, "With an experiment apparently."

"Oh!" Danny threw back his head and laughed. "That. It was just some stupid thing I got from a toy store. It's a fake frog in a jar – you add water and shake, give it a few minutes and hey presto – hello Prince Charming. I guess the frog's made out of some sort of water-soluble material, which dissolves to leave the Prince behind."

"How prosaic," Stella remarked, sounding faintly disappointed by the explanation.

"Well, Lucy thought I was a rocket scientist so who cares?" Danny said with a grin.

There was a sudden commotion in the corridor outside then, which had them all turning their heads to see what was going on.

"Looks like the guest of honour has arrived," Hawkes said, already shrugging out of his lab-coat and heading for the door.

"Try not to get caught up in the stampede, buddy," Danny called out after him as Stella quickly followed in his wake.

He shook his head with a chuckle as he was suddenly deserted on mass. Admittedly his daughter was cute and adorable, but she could also be obstreperous and moody when she wanted to be. He didn't think his colleagues would be quite so enamoured of her if they'd witnessed her in the throes of a full-blown temper tantrum. Red-faced and snotty-nosed, her appeal rapidly diminished. While she was the centre of such overwhelming attention though, she would always be sweet smiles and appealing dimples so he didn't think her popularity would be fading any time soon.

Knowing that his presence would probably distract his little girl from entertaining her doting audience, he decided to hang back for a while until the crowds had thinned out a bit. Lindsay sought him out around ten minutes later, knocking lightly on the door-frame to attract his attention as he peered into the microscope in front of him.

"Hey!" he greeted, lifting his head and turning on his stool to face her. "Where's Lucy?"

"Holding court in Mac's office," Lindsay told him with a smile. "I'm thinking she's going to be a while."

Danny laughed. "I'm surprised they didn't roll out the red carpet."

"Oh, Adam suggested it but I told him it would probably go to her head," Lindsay said ingeniously. "We can't have her going all diva on us, can we?"

"No, she'd be hell on earth," he remarked with an exaggerated shudder.

Lindsay giggled as she came further into the room. "You're as addicted as the rest of them, Messer," she accused.

"Maybe," he concurred, "But my expectations are considerably lower all the same."

Lindsay smiled. "So how's the Trebechi case going?" she asked; referring to the crime scene they'd been working together only a few days earlier. Given everything that had gone on since then, it seemed like weeks ago to her now.

Danny shrugged. "We're drawing a complete blank so far. You would think with a crime scene like that there'd be something for us to go on but…" He shook his head. "Nada. It's starting to look like some sort of professional hit."

Lindsay shook her head. A crime with that level of violence – it had to be personal, and the little girl in the picture… Her instincts had been screaming at her that there was something more to that. Of course, with everything that had been happening in her personal life, her professional one had had to take a backseat and she hadn't been able to look into it like she'd wanted to. And she wouldn't be back at work properly for another three weeks yet… Guilt curled low in her belly before she could prevent it.

"It'll still be here when you get back," Danny said, sensing her dilemma.

"I know but…"

"It takes months sometimes, Lindsay," Danny cut in. "You know that. Plus, you should be concentrating on yourself right now and not worrying about work."

"It seems so selfish though," Lindsay said uncomfortably.

"Maybe it is, but you can't find answers for everyone, Linds. Sometimes there is no rational explanation for murder. Sometimes it just is what it is - evil in its most basic form."

Lindsay nodded. She hated cases like that, the ones that defied any sort of logic or reason – twisted or otherwise. They haunted her for days afterwards, weeks sometimes. Whenever she was investigating a case, she was driven to understand the motivation behind the crime. She had to know, it was a compulsion in her that she couldn't control. The need to know why was her raison d'être. It was why she'd become a crime scene investigator when all her family had been dead set against it.

Thinking of her family brought her neatly to why she'd come looking for Danny in the first place. "I booked our flights this morning," she told him. "We fly out Wednesday morning."

Danny nodded. "You want me to take you to the airport?" he asked.

"Oh no, I mean… I don't want to put you out."

"You won't," he assured her. "I'm off that day and I want to say a proper goodbye to Lucy."

"You know you can call her whenever you want," she said.

He nodded. "Yeah, yeah, I know."

"So, umm… have you thought anymore about what we talked about last night?" Lindsay enquired diffidently.

"Some," Danny acknowledged with an incline of his head. "I'm not sure yet though, Linds. Look – I'll see how it goes, and give you a call when I've made up my mind."

Lindsay nodded. She couldn't really expect anymore than that, she supposed. They were still feeling their way tentatively through the jumbled maze of their relationship at present. It would be some time before the path became clearer to them.

"We should probably make sure our daughter isn't causing too much havoc," she suggested.

"Good idea," Danny agreed, glad that she hadn't pushed the issue. He would have likely refused if she had, and he wasn't sure that was the best thing for them. It was his choice, but he wanted to make a properly considered one. He didn't want to simply act on instinct and miss out on an opportunity to improve relations between them.

When they reached Mac's office, they found Lucy comfortably ensconced in their boss' lap with the almost empty basket of cupcakes on the desk in front of them. Stella and Hawkes were perched on the sofa nearby, while Adam stood just inside the doorway munching on the last remains of a strawberry cupcake. The rest of the Lab appeared to have dispersed or been dismissed.

"These are heaven, Lindsay," Adam told her as they entered the glass-walled office. "You should open a cupcake shop."

Lindsay laughed. "And when exactly do you think I'd find time to do that between this place and motherhood?" she said before she looked over at her boss. "I need to talk to you about some vacation days," she told him.

Mac nodded. "So I hear. A trip to Montana, huh?"

Obviously Lucy had been spilling the beans while she'd been gone. "If it's too much time," she said cautiously.

"Lindsay, it's fine," Mac cut in before she could go any further. "Go visit your family. You earned it."

"Thank-you," she said softly.

"So how you doing, Lucy-Lu?" Danny said to his daughter.

"Mommy let me wear my party-dress," she told him.

"So I see," he said with a grin.

"And my princess shoes." She lifted her short legs to show him the sparkly silver ballet pumps she wore on her tiny feet.

"So are you going to give me a twirl?" he enquired.

"Okay," Lucy said, abandoning her god-father's lap in favour of impressing her beloved Daddy.

Holding her arms out like a ballerina, she span in a circle to showcase her dress. The lavender satin garment was cap-sleeved and had a rich purple sash about the waist, which tied in a bow at the back. Purple beading decorated the neck-line and also dotted the tuile covering of the skirt. She wore a flowered Alice band in her hair and frilly little socks on her feet under the ballet pumps. It amazed him how she could go from tomboy to girly-girl in a blink of an eye. She was very much like her mother in that respect. Lindsay's general dress sense was casual chic, but when she really made an effort to look good, she was just dazzling and he had a hard time stopping his jaw from hitting the floor.

"You look beautiful, sweetheart," he told his daughter when she looked up expectantly for his reaction.

"Like a princess?" she prompted.

"Like a princess," he confirmed, swinging her up into his arms and planting a kiss on the bow of her lips.

"Can we go play on the computers now, Uncle Mac?" Lucy enquired from her father's arms. She had an endless fascination with the AV Lab, probably because everything was so visual there.

"Sure honey." Mac nodded, seemingly unconcerned by the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment being used as a child's plaything. "I think Adam has something to show you," he added.

"Really?" Lucy said excitedly. "Really Adam?"

"Err yeah…" Adam said, throwing a guilty glance at his boss. How the hell did he know? The guy had eyes and ears everywhere he was sure of it.

Mac suppressed a smile. He knew it was probably slightly unprofessional of him, but he found endless enjoyment in throwing his Senior Lab Tech off balance in this way. "You can make up the time later," he told him.

"Err yeah, umm… sure boss," Adam said, quickly backing out the room like a rabbit caught in headlights.

"You do that on purpose," Stella accused when they were the only two left in the room.

Mac allowed the grin to blossom. "But it's so much fun!"

Stella laughed. "One day you're going to get found out, you know."

"Not any time soon," Mac said, rising to his feet. "Now, let's go see exactly what all that equipment is capable of."

"He could probably make millions of dollars if he put his mind to it," Stella observed as they walked side by side down the corridor, following the little procession shortly ahead of them.

"Lucky he prefers to work for us then, isn't it?" Mac replied as they entered the AV Lab just in time to catch the start of the vividly visual display of computer-technics that Adam had put together for their little visitor's express entertainment.

"Well, Lucy certainly thinks so," Stella returned with a smile as the little girl's exclamations of delight and wonder filled their ears.

Mac nodded, but his eyes were on Danny rather than his god-daughter. The younger man's gaze was also elsewhere - fixed on his estranged wife's face as she watched their little daughter's exuberant pleasure with an affectionate smile on her lips. Danny's expression radiated a mixture of hope and apprehension. Mac could tell he was unsure of what to do for the best. He clearly wanted to give his marriage another shot, but he was obviously finding it difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Mac wished he could make it easier on them both, but, in the end, it was up to them to find a way through this. All he could do was be there to guide and advise, but ultimately the choice was theirs. He just hoped they made the right one for all concerned and didn't let their fear of the unknown decide for them.

**OOOOOO**

_**Several days later…**_

Around fifteen minutes after their plane had reached its cruising altitude, Lindsay settled back in her seat with a sigh of relief. Beside her, Lucy was busy with a colouring book and a box of crayons. It had taken considerable effort to calm her super-excited four year old, but, against all odds; she'd finally achieved the impossible. Closing her eyes, she thought back to another trip home when she'd been heavily pregnant and newly married…

_**Four and a half years earlier…**_

_The __plane banked sharply to the right and she felt her baby squirm inside of her in reaction. Placing a calming hand over her rounded stomach, she was rewarded with the pressure of a tiny foot against her palm. She smiled as a warm glow of happiness filled her. "Nearly there, little one," she murmured under her breath to her unborn child. "Not long now."_

_Glancing out of the window beside her, she caught a tantalising glimpse of the wheat-fields of her home state through the shifting clouds. Returning her gaze to her distended stomach, she experienced a sudden jolt of awareness as a shaft of sunlight broke through the haze and set the wedding band on her finger to sparkling. _

_She was still getting used to the fact that she was now a married woman. The short ceremony in the city clerk's office twenty-four hours earlier seemed but a distant memory to her now. Never in her wildest imaginings had she thought she'd be spending her first full day of marriage apart from her husband, but then she'd never expected to be getting married yesterday either. Danny had sprung that particular surprise on her completely out of the blue._

_She'd woken that morning in the pre-dawn hours to find herself wrapped snugly in her new husband's arms, his bare chest pressed intimately to her back and his left hand resting possessively over the swell of her abdomen. She'd traced her forefinger over the cool metal of the chunky ring on his third finger still not quite believing that they'd actually found the courage to take that fateful leap into the unknown. _

_A few hours later, they were bidding an emotional farewell at the airport and Lindsay had felt tears pricking at the back of her eyes __as Danny drew her into an affectionate hug. Wrapping her arms around his muscular back, she'd buried her face against the side of his neck and swallowed the lump in her throat. She hadn't expected it to be so hard to leave him. For the past few days, all she had thought about was seeing her family again. She hadn't contemplated the flip side of the coin – that she'd be leaving her life in New York behind in order to do so. _

"_I don't want to go," she'd sniffled, inwardly cursing the pregnancy hormones that had her acting like a weepy girl._

_Danny had tightened his arms around her as he felt the wetness of her tears on his skin. He smoothed a gentle hand over her hair and kissed the top of her head. "Well, that's a relief," he'd told her. "For a while there, I thought you couldn't wait to see the back of me."_

"_Danny…" Lindsay had pulled back and looked worriedly up into his face. "You didn't really think that, did you?" _

"_No, not really," he'd assured her but she could hear the underlying insecurity in his voice nevertheless. _

_The last brick in the wall of her defences had fallen away at that point. He was as scared as she, she realised, and somehow that made everything all right. She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him. "It's only for a few weeks. I'll be back before you know it."_

"_Yeah, that's what Mac said."_

"_Huh?"_

_Danny had shaken his head. "Never mind. Just come here."_

_Heedless of everyone around them, he'd pulled her towards him and kissed her until her head was spinning and her knees were weak. "Something to remember me by," he told her with a suggestive wink when he eventually released her from the dizzying embrace._

_Lindsay had laughed. "I'm hardly likely to forget you," she said. "I'm carrying around this constant reminder, aren't I?" She touched her fingers to her protruding belly to demonstrate her point._

_He'd laughed and kissed her baby bump then, saying an affectionate goodbye to their unborn child before she had to go. Her flight was announced a minute or so later and, however hard she tried, she hadn't been able to prevent the tears from overflowing and sliding down her cheeks._

"_I'm gonna miss you," she'd said, her breath hitching over the words. _

"_I gonna miss you too." Danny had told her gruffly, then speared his fingers through her hair and kissed her again, his thumbs brushing back and forth over the swells of her cheeks as his mouth moved confidently over hers. "I love you," he'd said when he finally released her. "Now go before I decide to kidnap you and make you stay."_

_Reaching up on her tiptoes, Lindsay had kissed him one more time before forcing herself to turn and walk away. When she looked back a few moments later, he was striding off determinedly in the opposite direction and she knew without knowing how that he hadn't been able to bring himself to watch her leave… _

"Madam? Would you or your little girl like something to drink?"

Lindsay blinked as the unfamiliar voice intruded upon her reverie. She looked up at the flight attendant. "No, no, we're fine, thank-you," she said, indicating her bottle of water and Lucy's juice bottle that she'd bought and filled at the airport. In-flight drinks cost the earth and she wasn't exactly made of money at the moment.

"Okay, but if you change your mind just press the call button and I'll be right with you," the brightly-dressed attendant said in that effortlessly cheerful tone that all flight personnel seemed to adopt. Weren't they ever in a bad mood?

Lindsay nodded and the woman moved on.

"Look Mommy," Lucy said, lifting her book to show her mother her colouring.

Lindsay smiled. "That's great, sweetie," she enthused. Her little girl was finally getting the idea of staying within the lines, but she still had some very strange ideas about what colour worked best. The horse in the picture was coloured a lurid purple. In all her childhood years growing up in Montana, Lindsay had never seen an animal that particular hue before.

"You'll be able to ride a horse at Gramps and Grams' place, you know," she said.

"I will?" Lucy's eyes grew big and round. "By myself?"

Lindsay nodded. "Yes, by yourself. I think you're old enough now." Lucy had only ridden with someone else behind her in the saddle thus far.

"What if I fall off?" her daughter asked.

"You won't," Lindsay assured her. "Gramps will find you a very special horse who is used to carrying little girls on his back."

"The one Daddy learned on was big," Lucy said apprehensively.

"You remember that?" Lindsay asked in surprise. Lucy had only been around fifteen months old at the time.

The little girl shook her head. "No, but Daddy showed me a picture."

Lindsay laughed. "Yeah, he was pretty proud of himself."

She'd been astounded actually. She'd never have told him, but he'd taken to it like a duck to water. By the end of the vacation, he was more comfortable in the saddle than many who had been riding for several years. She shouldn't have been surprised really, his instincts were spot-on and his co-ordination good. His eyesight was his only downfall, but with his contacts, it wasn't that much of a hindrance. Plus, he had a way about him that both people and animals took to in an instant. The horses had trusted him and that was half the battle really.

It was what had finally won her father round after their less than auspicious beginning to married life. He'd never been unwelcoming, but his protective instincts had been very much in evidence for the first year or so after Lucy was born. She thought it was the way that Danny had approached the task that had impressed her father rather than the actual achievement. He'd been his usual dogmatic self, refusing to give up even after getting thrown a couple of times. His clear enjoyment when he'd finally gotten the hang of it had been another point in his favour too.

Lindsay sighed. She supposed now they'd be right back at square one in that respect. If Danny did decide to visit next week there would be all that to negotiate. She ought to have told him that she'd stand by his side where her family was concerned. It was probably a lot of the reason behind his apparent reluctance to join them. She sensed that he wanted the time it would give them to talk, but that he wasn't quite ready to deal with everything a visit to Montana would entail. She would call him, she decided. Let him know that there was the small guest cabin on the edge of the property he could stay in if he wasn't comfortable sleeping in the main house. She was sure her Mom wouldn't object to the idea.

The rest of the flight passed by without incident, Lucy on her best behaviour once her initial excitement had faded. Before Lindsay knew it, they were collecting the bags from the luggage claim and heading towards the arrivals lounge. As she pushed the trolley down the long corridor with Lucy skipping along happily beside her, she was once more pulled back into her memories by the simple virtue of the two back-packing students walking alongside them…

_She turned on her cell once she passed through security. It beeped almost immediately and she scrolled down to open the message:_

'_Let me know when u & the bambino have landed safely, babe' she read. 'Luv u, Mrs. M! D xx'_

_She smiled and texted a short message back: 'Back on terra firma. The wheat fields r waiting... Speak 2 u soon, L xx P.S. Luv u 2, Mr. M!' _

_The pet names and the 'I love you's' were a relatively new thing for them. She remembered the first time Danny had spoken those three words to her – in the corridor outside Mac's office before they'd gone in to tell their boss that she was pregnant. He'd been somewhat awkward about telling her, but she knew it was only because he didn't say it very often. If there was one thing she'd learned about Danny, it was that he didn't say things he didn't mean though, mainly because he rarely voiced his innermost emotions to anyone._

_In fact, she mused as she walked – or rather waddled - down the corridor towards the baggage claim, she'd be willing to bet she was the first woman, apart from his mother, that he'd ever said those words to. He'd told her that she was the most long-term girlfriend he'd ever had a couple of months before she'd discovered she was pregnant. It was part of the reason she'd chosen to give him a second chance when almost everything inside of her was telling her that she should just walk away. His 'I miss you more than I can say even if I don't know how to say it' had gotten her to his apartment that night, but it was his candid admittance that 'this whole relationship deal is a new thing for me' that had made her eventually agree to try again. _

_They'd grown infinitely closer since her unexpected pregnancy had rocked their world for a second time, and the commitment that they'd made to each other yesterday had cemented their newly-discovered intimacy like nothing else could.__As they'd exchanged rings and spoken their wedding vows, something inside Lindsay had shifted. She didn't know what, she just knew that when the clerk pronounced them husband and wife, and Danny's lips had met hers in a long, sweet kiss, a feeling of calm contentment had settled over her. Overwhelmed, she'd gone through the rest of the day in a bit of a daze as the reality of their newly married status gradually sunk in. _

_Her cell rang as she entered the baggage hall and she didn't need to look at the display to know who it was. "Hey!"_

"_Hey! How ya doin'?"_

"_Right now, I'm contemplating the mechanics of retrieving luggage from the carousel when you're seven months pregnant," she answered._

"_Please tell me you're joking!"_

_Lindsay bit back a giggle at Danny's plaintive tone. "Why? It's a scientific dilemma."_

"_One with a very obvious solution. You get someone from Airport Security or you ask a fellow passenger to help. You don't - I repeat – don't attempt to retrieve it yourself."_

"_So I should get the Greek God look-a-like making eyes at me from across the baggage hall to help me, right?" she teased. "The one with the amazing pecs, golden tan and very big…"_

"_The one who's actually eyeing up the 5'8" willowy blonde standing behind you, you mean?" Danny cut in before she could finish. "You know she of the endless legs and thirty-four Double-D's?"_

_Lindsay laughed. "You never know, he might have a thing for short, heavily pregnant married women instead."_

"_Yeah well, you're my short, heavily pregnant married woman so if he tries anything, you tell him to back off, 'kay?"_

"_You're just determined to spoil my fun, aren't you?" Lindsay complained, pouting for effect even though he couldn't see her._

_Danny laughed. "Are we actually having this conversation?" he enquired in a slightly disbelieving tone and she giggled. _

"_You started it," she told him._

"_I did?"_

"_Yeah by being all Mr Overprotective. I'm fine, Danny, and I'm not going to do anything to harm the baby."_

"_I know that, but sometimes you can be stubborn beyond the point of sanity."_

"_Err… Pot and Kettle, don't you think, Mr Messer?"_

_Danny chuckled at her pointed retort. "Just promise me you'll get someone to help you, okay?"_

_Lindsay rolled her eyes but capitulated nevertheless. She'd never admit it but she found his mollycoddling remarkably endearing. "Okay," she agreed. "Look, I've got to go. I'll call you when I get to my parents' place."_

"_Sure thing. Good luck with your Mom and Dad."_

_Lindsay smiled. "Just because you put a ring on my finger doesn't mean Daddy's going to forgive you for knocking up his baby girl, you know," she teased._

"_Damn and I thought it was a sure-fire way of avoiding the double-barrelled shot-gun. What a waste of a twenty-five dollar money-order, huh?"_

"_If you think you're funny, you're sadly mistaken, Detective Messer," she told him acidly._

_Danny laughed. "Just kidding. I love you, 'kay?"_

"_Yeah, I love you too." She was quiet for a moment and then drew in a deep breath. "Okay, I'm hanging up now…" _

_She pushed the red button and was just slipping her cell into her purse when it beeped again. Her eyes filled as she read the message. 'I miss u already…D x'_

_Wiping away the stray tear that escaped to slip down her cheek, she sighed and approached a preppy-looking college student to help her with her luggage. _

"_You're not going to go into labour on me, are you?" he asked a few minutes later, glancing at her warily as he effortlessly pulled both his and her suitcases down the corridor towards the Arrivals lounge._

_She grinned. "Not for another seven weeks, I hope," she told him. "I'm visiting with my family here in Montana for a few weeks, but I want to be back in New York with my husband before the baby arrives."_

_That thought gave her a momentary flash of concern. What if she went into labour early? Danny would never make it here in time. She hadn't realised how much she was relying on him to be there for her. Why the hell had she thought this was a good idea? She was just married, voluminously pregnant with her first child and hundreds of miles away from her husband. It was crazy. She had the sudden urge to turn around and demand that they take her back to the Big Apple immediately…_

"Lindsay!"

Glancing up, she saw her parents waving to her from behind the barrier as she and Lucy went through the automatic doors into the main arrivals hall. With a squeal of delight, Lucy took off at a run to greet them. Lindsay smiled as she saw her mother bend to scoop the excited little girl up in her arms for an affectionate hug, while her father hovered close by waiting impatiently for his turn.

Finally relinquishing her grand-daughter to her husband's arms, Elizabeth Monroe approached her daughter, her hands out-stretched. Overwhelmed, Lindsay stepped gratefully into the ready embrace. "Oh Mom!" she breathed, inhaling the familiar smell of her mother's perfume as she held on tight.

Suddenly, it was all too much and she broke down in tears, sobs hiccupping in the back of her throat as her Mom whispered nonsensical words of comfort in her ear and rubbed a hand up and down her spine in a soothing gesture. In the background, she vaguely heard her father distracting Lucy with promises of candy before their footsteps retreated and she was left alone in her mother's arms.

"Oh god, I'm sorry!" she said when she eventually managed to compose herself. Drawing back, she swiped at the remaining tears on her cheeks and took a few, deep breaths to calm herself.

"I am happy to see you, I promise," she said with a teary laugh.

"Have you seen the doctor?" her mother asked, getting straight to the point without any preamble. She'd seen her daughter go through enough trauma to last a lifetime, and she recognised that this was more serious than just a bad day.

Lindsay nodded. "She gave me something. I didn't want to take them but…" She sighed, raking her fingers through her hair. "I didn't think I'd be here again, Mom."

"You've had a rough year and it was bound to take its toll on you eventually," her mother pointed out. "Why didn't you say something to me though?"

Lindsay shrugged. "I guess I didn't want to worry you," she said. "And I don't think I really knew myself how bad things had gotten until recently. I thought I was handling it and then everything just unravelled."

"Does Danny know?"

"About the depression, you mean?" Lindsay said. "Yeah, he was at the hospital when it was diagnosed. He doesn't really understand what it means for me personally though."

"You've never talked to him about what you went through?" Elizabeth asked.

"About what happened, yes, but the aftermath?" Lindsay shook her head. "No, not really. I mean, he knows I have nightmares every so often, but that's not so unexpected, is it?"

"Oh Lindsay…" her mother sighed.

"I was doing okay," her daughter said defensively. "It just never seemed that important. We were happy, Mom. I didn't want to do anything to taint that."

"He was your husband, honey. You should have shared all of that with him. Being each other's support system is part of what marriage is all about. The two of you always seemed so close; I never imagined for a second you wouldn't have confided in him about this."

"It was just too hard, Mom."

"Why?"

"I don't know, okay?" Lindsay exclaimed. "I just… I don't know!

"Look – can we not do this here?" she asked plaintively. "I'm tired, and in desperate need of a shower. Plus, Lucy is going to be as cranky as hell tomorrow if she doesn't get to bed on time tonight. Let's just go home, okay?"

"All right," her mother agreed, "But we _are_ going to talk, Lindsay. You can't avoid it forever. You said you wanted Danny back, that you made a mistake in ending things with him. Well, if that's the case, then I'm going to do everything in my power to help you achieve what you want. You're my daughter and I want you to be happy. And if Danny's the man for you…"

She broke off and allowed the silence to fill in the unspoken words for her.

Lindsay brushed a hand wearily across her face. "I know, Mom, I know."

"So let me help, all right?"

"What if I'm beyond help?" Lindsay's voice was downcast and decidedly forlorn.

Elizabeth Monroe cupped her daughter's face in her hands and looked deep into her eyes. "I will never believe that, ever," she proclaimed strongly. "You need to have faith in yourself, baby. If you trust in who you are, things will get better, I know it."

Hugging her mother for the second time, Lindsay sighed. "I hope so, Mom. I really do…" she whispered.

_**To be continued…**_


	10. Déjà Vu

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi all! New update for you. There's a reason for the earlier than normal update – more of at the end of the chapter. For now though, on with the story…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 10**__** – Déjà Vu**_

_**New York Crime Lab, a week later…**_

Danny Messer was trying to concentrate, but his mind kept wandering despite his best efforts to focus on the task at hand rather than his complicated personal life. Yesterday had been a particularly trying day for him and was the main reason behind his current distraction. It had started off badly and had only proceeded to get worse as the hours unfolded.

In the first instance, his alarm had failed to go off, making him late for his shift. Next, there'd been the stress of having to work alone with Rachel for the first time since their split, followed by a dressing down from Mac after he'd lost his temper with a suspect in the interrogation room – an unpleasant experience that he hadn't had to endure in years now. Then, to cap it all off, his lawyer had called about finalising the divorce…

The legalities of his and Lindsay's current situation hadn't really registered upon him until then. He had no idea what he should do. Should he go through with it, or put things on hold for a while? He wished he knew. He was either going to have to pay his attorney a retainer he could ill afford, or push ahead with the permanent severing of his marriage at a time when he was no longer certain that it was what he really wanted. It was a dilemma and a half, make no mistake.

He should have mentioned it to Lindsay the previous evening during his daily web-chat with her and Lucy, but he hadn't. With his little daughter so full of enthusiasm about her riding lessons and the den she and her cousins had been building that day, it hadn't seemed right to bring it up in the wake of such childish delight. Lindsay had looked rather pale and strained too, another reason for his reticence.

Danny didn't really understand why she looked so beaten down to be honest. The idea behind her visiting her family was for her to get some rest and recuperation, not to get even more strung out about things. He'd wanted to ask if she was all right, but it hadn't seemed appropriate under the circumstances. It wasn't really any of his business, plus if she'd wanted to tell him about it, she would have volunteered the information herself…

"Arghh!"

Letting loose with a frustrated groan, he dropped his head down on the desk in front of him, and curled his fingers around the nape of his neck as he attempted to stop his mind from running around in endless circles. He needed to focus. He had a job to do and this wasn't getting him anywhere.

"Danny?"

Mac's questioning voice sounded from behind him then, and he raised his head from the desk to shoot the older detective a weary smile of greeting. "Hey boss! Just ignore me, okay? I'm going quietly crazy here."

Taking in the younger man's reddened eyes and pale, sallow skin, Mac reached out and deliberately pushed the door shut behind him to afford the two of them some privacy. Crossing the room, he sat down in the chair opposite his worn-out colleague. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked matter-of-factly.

Leaning back in his chair, Danny rubbed ineffectually at his tired eyes. "It's nothing," he said with a sigh.

Mac shot him a look that told him he didn't believe that for a second, which forced the younger CSI to divulge the details of what was troubling him. "My lawyer called yesterday," he explained. "He wants me to make an appointment to go over the final divorce papers before the hearing next month."

"You're still going ahead with that?" Mac asked in some surprise.

"I don't know; that's the problem. Lindsay and I - we're stranded in the middle of no-mans land at the moment. I don't want to call it off if there's nowhere for us to go, but on the other hand…" he trailed off into silence and shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

"Have you talked to Lindsay about it?" his boss enquired.

"It's not really something you can discuss long-distance, Mac."

"I appreciate that, but Stella said something about you possibly flying out to Montana for a few days?"

"I'd pretty much decided that was a bust," Danny told him.

"Why?"

"Avoidance, I guess," he confessed. "I know we'd have time to talk, but I don't necessarily think that her parents' place is the best environment for us to do that. Plus, I'm not really sure whether Lindsay's up to it at the moment either."

"I know you don't want to put any unnecessary pressure on her, Danny, but there _is_ such a thing as being too complacent, you know," Mac told him. "If you want to move things forward then you're going to have to step up to the plate and fight for what you want."

"Don't you think I don't know that?" Danny responded a little defensively.

"So what's holding you back then?"

Danny let out a resigned sigh. "Me, I guess. I just… I don't want to mess it up."

Mac raised his eyebrows at that. "Didn't we have this conversation four and a half years ago?" he remarked dryly.

Danny's lips quirked at the recollection. "Yeah, yeah, I guess we did," he concurred.

"And was it the wrong decision?"

"Getting married, you mean?"

Mac nodded in reply.

Danny shook his head. "No. If I had to go back and do it all again, I would."

"Well, I guess that's your answer then, isn't it?" the older man pointed out.

Drawing in a deep breath, Danny held it for a few seconds before releasing it with a whoosh. "I guess it is," he accepted with a faint smile.

Satisfied that he'd dug beneath the surface and suitably exposed the chink in his friend's armour, Mac rose to his feet and moved around the desk to access the computer. Quickly calling up the electronic leave database, he pushed the mouse and keyboard towards Danny.

"Just fill in the days," he instructed. "I'll approve them as soon as I get back to my office."

"Thanks Mac," Danny said with sincerity.

"You're welcome," his boss replied, laying a brief hand on his shoulder before turning for the door. "Just give my god-daughter a big kiss and hug from me when you get there, okay?" he said as a parting shot. "And tell Lindsay we're thinking of her too."

"I will," Danny assured him, and then turned back to the waiting monitor and used the mouse to select the appropriate date…

**OOOOOO**

_**The Monroe Ranch, **__**the following day…**_

Sipping at a tall glass of homemade lemonade, Lindsay lounged idly in the swing-seat on the front veranda of her parents' house. Despite the fact that fall was almost upon them and the leaves were turning golden and russet on the trees, the weather was clear, sunny and pleasantly warm.

Probably for the first time since she'd arrived in Montana over a week ago, she was enjoying a few precious hours alone. Her parents had gone into town to meet some friends for lunch, while her sister and brothers were all busy with their own homes and lives. As much as Lindsay loved her family – and she did love them – their concern for her well-being could be emotionally draining at times, and every so often she just needed a little respite from it all.

Lucy had chosen to remain behind at the ranch rather than going on a nature walk with her youngest cousin's pre-school class so Lindsay was not completely alone with her thoughts. Not that she minded - it was nice to share some one-on-one time with her daughter. Her little girl sat cross-legged on the decking nearby, playing an elaborate game of make-believe with the plastic figurines she had lined up in neat rows in front of her.

"Put your hat back on, sweetie," Lindsay instructed, noticing that Lucy had discarded the protective garment in the past few minutes while she hadn't been looking.

"But Mommy…" the little girl started to whine.

"But Mommy nothing," Lindsay cut in firmly. "Put it back on. I don't want you getting sun-stroke and neither do you if you have any sort of sense. It's not a very nice experience, I can tell you."

Her bottom lip jutting in protest, Lucy obediently put the blue sun-hat back on over her honey-blonde curls. Thirty seconds later, the small moment of childish rebellion was thankfully a thing of the past as the call of the imagination once again drew the little girl into its thrall. Lindsay smiled and took another sip of her drink as she leisurely rocked the swing-seat back and forth with her foot.

The first few days of her visit had been a hive of activity as preparations for the weekend's party reached fever pitch. Her mother had still found the time to sit down for a long talk over coffee and pie however. Lindsay wasn't sure that they'd reached any notable conclusions during their tête-à-tête, but it had felt good to unburden herself even so. She'd been able to tell her Mom things that she'd hadn't been able to confide in Stella, despite the good friend her colleague had become over the past six years or so.

Unfortunately, it had all started to go wrong the day after the anniversary party. It had just been immediate family for dinner that day and her current bout of depression had quickly become common knowledge amongst her elder siblings. Lindsay fervently wished that her parents had kept it to themselves, but she knew that was an almost impossible endeavour. It simply wasn't how their family worked. A problem shared was a problem halved in their opinion - doubly so when it involved the undisputed baby of the family – Lindsay herself.

It was hard for her to be angry at them for their well-meaning interference. Not when she knew that the traumatic events of her past had been just as difficult on them as they had on her. They'd had to watch her go to hell and back, not to mention live with the fact that they hadn't been able to protect her when it mattered. It was as if they'd been trying to make up for that lapse ever since, and Lindsay had no idea how to tell them to just stop and let it alone. It seemed so ungrateful somehow; especially when you considered the unfailing love and support that they'd shown her in the difficult years that followed.

Accepting the job in New York had helped enormously with that however. Her family hadn't wanted her to move so far away, but Lindsay knew that she would have gone quietly crazy if she'd stayed. It had been the best thing for all of them in the end. With the physical distance, their over-protective concern had gradually waned, before pretty much vanishing altogether once Danny had become a permanent fixture in her life. Of course since their separation, things had taken a backward step in that respect, but, all in all, Lindsay no longer felt like the apron-strings were choking her half to death. Or at least she hadn't done until a few days ago anyway.

Her Mom was the only one who seemed to have any sort of proper perspective on the matter. Her father, older brothers and sister were all suffocating her with their pathological need to look out for her, and she was about ready to scream with frustration at their incessant fussing. She was a grown woman, for god's sake. Okay so she wasn't doing so great at the moment, but she was far from incapable of taking care of herself.

The crushing weight of their concern was starting to take an unhealthy toll on her physical and emotional well-being too. It took her back to the way things used to be, and with that remembrance came the return of the nightmares and the paralysing anxiety attacks that she thought she'd seen the back of. She'd woken up the previous night in a blind panic, gasping for air, her heart racing fifteen to the dozen and her skin clammy with sweat. Salty tears had been streaming down her cheeks and she'd been shaking like a leaf. It had been a good hour before she could relax enough to attempt to sleep again, and those sixty long, lonely minutes had been filled with silent anguish and dark despair.

It was at moments like that that she wished desperately for Danny's company. She hadn't suffered such nightmares all that often whilst they'd been together, but when she had, his presence by her side had been of infinite help to her. Maybe she hadn't confided in him in the way that her mother thought she should have done, but she'd accepted his strength and unspoken support nevertheless.

Curling up in his arms while he stroked her hair and whispered soothing words of comfort in her ear had been her refuge from the stifling darkness. Wrapped tightly in that solid embrace, she'd felt safe, protected and at peace with who she was. Away from that security however, the doubts started to creep in. Why her? Why had she been allowed to live when everyone else had been left to die? What was it that made her so different? So apart from all the rest?

The sound of a car approaching pulled Lindsay out of her darkening thoughts then, and her stomach sank like a lead balloon in reaction. Her parents couldn't be back from their outing already, could they? They'd told her they'd be gone for the rest of the afternoon. She hoped to god it wasn't another family member dropping in to check up on her. Geez! Could they not leave her alone for more than five minutes?

Rising from the swing-seat, she crossed to the outside edge of the porch to view the vehicle's steady approach along the gravelled driveway. As it drew nearer, she realised it was an unfamiliar dark-coloured rental sedan and not one of her elder siblings coming to pay an unwanted visit as she'd initially assumed.

"Who is it, Mommy?" Lucy asked, sensing her mother's distraction and rising to her feet in response.

"I don't know, sweetie," Lindsay replied even as hope burned like a wildfire inside her chest. It couldn't be, surely? He'd said he'd call…

"DADDY!" Lucy shrieked as the car door opened and the familiar figure stepped out.

Clattering down the porch steps, the little girl took off at a sprint across the grass towards her smiling father. Her heart lodged somewhere in the vicinity of her throat, Lindsay watched as Danny lifted his daughter high up in the air and spun her around in circles, making her squeal with delight. Cuddling her close, he kissed her several times before he finally set her back down on her feet again. With Lucy dancing along beside him in a state of euphoria, he then headed towards the house, crossing the grass in long, loping strides.

"It's Daddy, Mommy," Lucy called out as the two of them approached.

"So I see," Lindsay said to her daughter. "This is getting to be a habit," she remarked to her estranged husband.

Danny grinned up at her as she stood on the top step looking down on them. "Sorry, I guess I should have called," he said in his distinctive New York accent. "It was something of a last minute decision though."

Ducking her gaze, Lindsay ran a nervous hand through her hair. "Doesn't matter," she said a little shyly. "I'm glad you're here."

"You sure?" Danny asked, climbing up the three steps and reaching out to gently take her hand in his.

Her eyes met his steady gaze and something passed between them that Lindsay was at a loss to name. Whatever it was broke the ice however, and she smiled easily at him in return. "Yeah, yeah, I'm sure," she assured him, supremely aware of his fingers still entwined with hers.

"Do you want some lemonade, Daddy?" Lucy enquired innocently from behind them. "Me and Grams made it."

They turned just in time to avert impending disaster. "Whoa!" Lindsay exclaimed; hurrying forward as her daughter reached out for the glass jug full of liquid. "I think you better let Mommy do that, sweetie," she said. "It's too heavy for you. You hold the glass steady while I pour."

Lucy obediently curled her little palms around the glass and waited while her Mom filled it about three-quarts full with the cloudy liquid. She then carefully lifted it and offered it to her father, her brow furrowed in concentration. "There you go, Daddy."

"Thanks, baby," he said as it took it from her. He took a sip. "Mmm," he said expansively, smacking his lips together. "You made this, huh?"

Lucy nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, this morning while Mommy was still asleep."

"Late night, huh?" Danny commented playfully to Lindsay and was dismayed to see the haunted look that entered her eyes as a result.

"Something like that," she said, her voice a little strained.

"Do you like it, Daddy?" his daughter asked before he could find out what was wrong.

He turned his attention back to his little girl and smiled. "I think it might just be the best lemonade I've ever tasted," he told her.

Lucy beamed. "I squeezed the lemons," she said proudly.

"Well, that must be it then," Danny said as he took a seat. "You must be the supreme champion of lemon squeezers."

Lucy nodded in agreement. "And I stirred it with a special spoon too," she added with child-like aplomb.

Danny chuckled and then nodded at the little figurines arranged on the decking. "Whatcha playing, sweetheart?" he asked.

As Lucy climbed into her father's lap and launched into a detailed explanation of a game full of fairy princesses, talking animals and a world where the sky was green and the grass blue, Lindsay wandered into the house to compose herself. Danny's innocent remark had plunged her straight back into the horror of her most recent nightmare. She couldn't remember all that much, just the bang-bang-bang of repeated shots followed by flickering images of a room awash with scarlet-red blood.

Wrapping her arms around her middle, she tried to slow her agitated breathing and calm her hammering heart. It took a while, but she eventually managed to re-centre herself. Climbing the staircase, she entered the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. She didn't know where all this had come from. She'd visited her family in Montana before and had not been plagued with her past in this way. Perhaps it was because she was so low generally that she had succumbed this time around. It should be over with, done, but it appeared there was still one more hurdle that she had to face before she could finally lay it all to rest and move on.

There was a light rap on the door-frame. "Lindsay?" a voice enquired from behind her.

She turned to see Danny standing in the doorway. "Are you okay?" he asked with concern.

"Lucy?" she enquired, deliberately avoiding his question with one of her own.

"She's downstairs watching a cartoon on TV," he told her as he came further into the room. "You didn't answer my question," he pressed.

"It's err… it's nothing," she assured him. "Don't worry about it."

"Please don't give me any of that crap," Danny said wearily. "I was hoping we were beyond all of that and could just be honest with each other. If we can't then what's the point, huh?"

"I…" Lindsay broke off and sucked in a shuddering breath. "All right so it's not nothing, but I can't discuss it right now, Danny. I want to… I just… I can't…"

She bit her lip against the hitch in her throat, not wanting to surrender to the weakness, but desperately needing to break through the physical barrier that seemed to be separating the two of them at the moment. "I just… I really need a hug right now," she confessed in a whisper.

It was put so simply, Danny responded without thinking. Closing the gap between them, he enveloped her in his arms and pulled her close. Lindsay clung to him like he was her living life-raft. She was shaking uncontrollably, her body racked with tremors, but if she was crying along with it, her tears were silent to him. He didn't know what to say so he didn't say anything. She seemed so fragile in his arms, and yet incongruously she was the strongest woman he knew.

The only other time he remembered her being so vulnerable to him was whenever she'd woken from one of her infrequent nightmares. He'd known the source of them, of course, but she'd never wanted to talk about it and he hadn't pushed. He couldn't fathom the effect something like that would have on a young girl's psyche, but she'd somehow fought past it, moved on and grown into the beautiful, intelligent woman that he'd fallen in love with. Maybe her childhood trauma wasn't as in the past as he'd always believed however.

"I'm sorry," Lindsay said quietly when she eventually summoned the strength to pull away from him.

"For what?" Danny said, but didn't wait for an answer since the question was essentially rhetorical. "I need you to tell me, Lindsay," he went on. "If we're ever to find our way back from this, I need you to be honest with me about what you've been going through."

Lindsay nodded, not needing to be told what he was talking about. She knew he was right. She knew her mother was right. If she wanted to experience everything that marriage had to offer her, then she needed to learn to confide her deepest darkest fears to the man she shared her life with.

"I know," she said, "But this… it isn't easy for me, Danny."

"I appreciate that," he answered. "Just take your time, okay? Whenever you're ready, I'm here for you."

"Are you?" Lindsay asked sadly. "Are you really?"

Danny sighed. "I'm trying to be," he told her. "I _want_ to be, I promise you that. And whatever else, Lindsay, you can count on me as your friend. I know that you want more from me, but this is a definite obstacle in the way of that. Until we've gotten past it, it's difficult to see what lies beyond to tell you the truth."

"An ultimatum then," she concluded.

Danny shook his head. "No, no, more of an entreaty," he explained. "I know I'm being over-cautious here, but I feel like I have to be under the circumstances. I don't want to make your health worse, or put Lucy through any kind of unintentional emotional trauma. I need to understand what we're dealing with before I make any kind of clear-cut decision about our future together. I'm starting to think that there is a lot that you've got hidden away deep inside you that I know nothing about. And unless I learn more about the woman behind the mask…"

"You don't know whether I'm someone you really want to be with?" Lindsay finished for him.

Danny regarded her silently for a moment. "There see, that's exactly what I'm talking about," he said soberly. "You're making assumptions about how I feel rather than actually listening to what I have to say. What are you so frightened of, huh? That I'm going to confirm all your negative opinions about yourself? Say all the things that you say to yourself whenever you look in the mirror?"

When he saw her blanch and go white as a sheet, he knew he'd hit the nail on the head. "Oh Lindsay," he said with a shake of his head.

"No!" she gasped, stepping back in a sudden panic as he instinctively reached out for her. "Don't touch me!"

Her hands fluttered agitatedly about her face as her breathing became progressively more erratic. "Please just leave me alone," she begged. "I can't do this right now! I'm not ready. I'm just… I'm not ready! I'm not ready!"

Afraid that she was about to start hyper-ventilating, Danny quickly backed off. "All right," he said calmly. "All right. We don't have to do this now. It can wait. Lindsay, Lindsay, look at me…"

"Look at me!" he demanded more sharply when she failed to comply. Her panicked gaze shifted to his of its own violation. "Breathe, okay?" he urged, keeping his voice steady and neutral as he'd been trained to do in a crisis situation. "Deep breaths in and out."

"That's it, baby," he encouraged as she struggled to bring her panic back under control. "That's my girl. In… and out. In… and out."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she burst out once she'd calmed down enough to think clearly. "Oh God!" she moaned, utterly humiliated. "I thought I was over this."

"You've had panic attacks before?" Danny asked, his blue eyes filled with concern.

She nodded, her brown eyes anguished. "Yes, after… I'm sorry." She covered her face with her hands.

Danny reached out and prised her fingers apart. "Don't apologise," he said. "And don't be embarrassed. It happens, you know? There is nothing to be ashamed of." He brushed her hair away from her pale face. "You look tired," he observed, noting the dark circles under her eyes.

"I didn't sleep too good last night," she admitted.

"So go take a nap," he said. "I can keep Lucy suitably entertained."

She tried to smile, but didn't quite manage it. "I don't deserve you."

"I'm really not that much of a catch," he told her lightly, coaxing a genuine if weak smile out of her in return.

She reached out and touched his face with the tips of her fingers. "Thank-you," she said before her hand fell away from his skin.

Stepping around him, she retreated slowly down the hallway to her room, her movements stiff and jerky as if she'd just completed a marathon. Danny watched her go, feeling as if a sudden light-bulb had illuminated above his head. All this time and he'd never known. Oh, he knew she had her insecurities, but he had never expected anything like this. It ran so much deeper than he had ever imagined. There were still a lot of stones left unturned, but he thought he was beginning to piece together a truer picture of the woman he'd married.

His senseless fling with Rikki Sandoval hadn't just shattered her trust in him, it had knocked her confidence too, validated her personal opinion that she wasn't truly worthy of his love – of anyone's love for that matter. No wonder she'd always been expecting the worst, waiting for the other shoe to drop if that's how she'd felt. What had been his mistake to correct, his disloyalty to make up for, had become something else entirely. It was almost as if she was excusing his behaviour because she didn't feel as if she deserved any better. And when it had all become too much, when she believed she'd been about to lose him, she'd shut down in order to protect herself from the agony of that bitter humiliation.

He sighed. The road ahead was not going to be easy. He hadn't expected it to be, but he hadn't envisaged anything of this nature even so. He really hoped he had the strength of commitment that this journey was going to entail. He needed to hold it together now, because if he didn't, he could end up doing more harm than good.

Whichever way this turned out, he had to ensure that Lindsay came out the other side of it emotionally intact. His child needed a mother, and he personally would not be able to forgive himself if he ended up crushing a valued friend. Because if there was one thing he knew for sure amidst all the other uncertainty surrounding them, it was that Lindsay Monroe was one of the best friends he'd ever had.

Period.

**OOOOOO**

_**Later that night…**_

Indulging in a moment of silent observation, Elizabeth Monroe stood in the doorway for a time before finally deciding that she ought to make her presence known.

"Hey!" Danny greeted as she sat down next to him on the back porch. "I was just looking at the stars," he said with a slight smile. "I don't think I properly knew what they looked like until I came to Montana for the first time."

He looked down at his hands laced together in his lap. "I didn't mean to upset her so much," he told his mother-in-law remorsefully.

Elizabeth waved that off. "She had to face it some time," she said. "She needed for you to know, Danny. The strain of keeping you ignorant was too heavy a burden for her to bear much longer."

Danny sighed. "She asleep?" he asked.

Elizabeth nodded. "I made her go to bed. She could barely keep her eyes open she was that tired." She paused for a beat before continuing. "You settle into the guest-cabin all right?" she asked.

Danny inclined his head. "Yes thanks," he said. "I don't think Lucy really understands why I can't stay with you, but I think I've persuaded her it's some sort of outward bound adventure I'm on."

Elizabeth laughed at that. "You must be five minutes walk from the house if that," she said in amusement.

"Hey, I'm a city boy – that's the wilderness, trust me," Danny quipped.

Elizabeth smiled. "You could have stayed at the house, you know," she said, her tone serious now.

"I don't think that would've gone down too well with Jack, do you?" Danny pointed out. Elizabeth's welcome had been as warm as ever, but his father-in-law's had been distinctly frosty in comparison.

Elizabeth sighed. "He's just over-protective that's all. We all are, I guess, but Jack takes it to extremes sometimes. You have to understand what it was like for him – his baby girl and he wasn't there to protect her. Imagine what it would be like if it was Lucy in that situation."

Danny shuddered at thought. "I get it, I do," he assured her, and then sighed. "She never told me about it, Beth," he said, "Not nearly enough anyway."

His mother-in-law reached out to lay her hand over his. "Yes, I know," she replied. "I have to say it never occurred to me that she wouldn't have done - although I shouldn't have been all that surprised, I suppose."

"Why not?"

"Because she…" Elizabeth broke off with a shake of her head. "You need to hear this from Lindsay, Danny. It's not my story to tell."

"Yes it is," her son-in-law insisted. "Okay so Lindsay needs to tell me how it was for her personally, but that's only one part of the whole. Only you and the rest of the family know what it was like to be on the outside looking in, and that's where I'm at right now, where I'll always be in some respects."

Elizabeth regarded him silently for a moment. She knew he was a good man, but she was aware that her daughter had probably pushed him to the limits of his endurance over the past year with her constantly see-sawing emotions.

"Don't give up on her, Danny," she pleaded quietly. "I know it's been rough, and that it probably seems like more trouble than its worth right now, but give her a chance, please. She's struggling, but she loves you and you're good for her. You always have been. You clearly still have a lot of compassion left in your heart, but if there's still even a tiny spark of what you used to feel for her, don't let it die out. If you stick with it, I'm sure it'll be worth it in the end. I think if you truly understand what she went through, her little idiosyncrasies and the way she reacts to situations might make more sense to you."

"So tell me, Beth," Danny urged. "Tell me what it was like. For her, for you, for your family… just tell me, okay?"

Her heart heavy inside her chest, Elizabeth gazed blankly out into the pitch darkness of the night for a protracted moment before finally responding to his plea. "It's a long, painful story, Danny," she told him, her tone weary. "And now is not really the time. It's getting late and I'm ready for my bed. Come by for breakfast in the morning though and we can talk then. Jack is taking Lucy out for an early morning ride so they won't be around to interrupt. Plus, Lindsay was absolutely exhausted so I imagine she'll sleep in tomorrow. She's not slept particularly well since she got here, but today seems to have lifted some of the weight off her shoulders, so hopefully that will be enough to help her relax and get some proper rest tonight."

"This isn't the first time is it?" Danny observed astutely. "I understand what happened to her as a teenager was a horribly traumatic experience, but this isn't the first time she's suffered from depression since then, is it?"

Elizabeth shook her head. "No, she went through a bad time when she was around nineteen, and then again shortly before she moved to New York. I worried about her during the trial too, but she seemed to come through that all right." She smiled. "You helped a lot with that, I think. Even though it was a monumentally difficult thing for her to face, she had something worthwhile to fall back on when the going got tough…"

"We weren't together then, you know," Danny said.

"I know," Elizabeth replied. "But you don't catch the red-eye from New York to Montana after working round the clock for just anyone, do you?"

Danny grinned a little self-consciously. "No, I don't suppose you do," he concurred.

"The point was the potential was there and it gave her something positive to focus on when everything else seemed so bleak. I think that helped her through, gave her hope for a brighter future."

"Too bad we made such a mess of it then, huh?"

"Oh, I think there's hope yet," Elizabeth said with a slight smile. "After all, you're still getting on those planes, aren't you? And I don't believe that was just for Lucy's sake either."

"No, no, it wasn't," Danny agreed, "But it's not going to be easy, Beth. We've grown so far apart; it's hard to see how we're ever going to bridge the gap between us."

"All you can do is try, Danny," Elizabeth said. "All I ask of you is to try - for Lucy, for Lindsay _and_ for yourself. If you know that you've given it your best shot, you won't have to live with any regrets, will you?"

"No, I don't suppose I will."

"Well, on that note, I think I'll be turning in," Elizabeth said, rising to her feet. "Good night Danny," she said, laying a gentle hand on the top of his head by way of farewell.

"Goodnight," her son-in-law returned, his tone introspective. "Oh, and Beth?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks, you didn't have to be so…" He absently waved his hand. "Well, you know, considering."

Elizabeth sighed. "It takes two to make a marriage, Danny, and two to break it. Vilifying you isn't going to achieve anything, is it? When all is said and done, my daughter wants you back in her life. If I believed she was naïve in hoping for that, then maybe I'd be a little more cautious around you. I don't though, so I'm not going to put any further obstacles in your way. The two of you have enough to deal with already."

"Oh and don't worry about Jack," she added, pausing in the open doorway. "He'll come around eventually. He's a stubborn old fool but all he really wants is for Lindsay to be happy. You put the smile back on her face and the sparkle back in her eye and he'll be eternally grateful."

"Oh good, no pressure then," Danny remarked dryly.

Elizabeth's subsequent laughter was low and sweet and rippled through him like a cool mountain breeze. "I believe you're up to the challenge," she told him. "Sleep well, honey."

After his mother-in-law had retreated back inside, Danny picked up the flash-light beside him and started to make his way across the yard. Passing the long, low stable block on his left, he followed the narrow path down a steep, but short incline to reach the small guest house that lay beyond. Inserting the old-fashioned key into the well-oiled lock, he twisted it counter-clockwise, then pushed open the door and stepped inside.

House was probably pushing the description a little if truth be told. It was a squat, square building with just a bedroom, a tiny bathroom and a small open-plan kitchen/living area to its name. It fulfilled his needs though and it negated the awkwardness of staying at the main house. It wasn't that he didn't like his in-laws; it was just that with things the way they were between him and Lindsay at present, he didn't feel comfortable availing himself of their home. Here, he could have his own space, but be close enough by to visit with Lucy whenever he wished, or to talk to Lindsay when the time came for them to take that next step towards a possible reconciliation.

Toeing off his sneakers and socks, he stripped himself of his jeans and t-shirt and went through into the bathroom to wash his face and brush his teeth. After completing his nightly ablutions, he wandered back into the darkened bedroom and slid between the cool sheets of the bed.

Lying on his back with his arms pillowing his head, he gazed up at the ceiling and ordered his mind to relax. Weariness was seeping into his bones as the stresses and the strains of the past few weeks finally caught up with him. He'd been running on adrenaline for far too long, he realised. He needed to rest, he needed to sleep, he needed to…

His eyes closed and sleep consumed him…

_**To be continued…**_

_A/N2: __All right so I'm warning you now: there isn't going to be an update next week, I'm afraid, because I'm going away on my hols. That's why I've posted this weeks' part early because I wanted to know what at least some of you think before I go. I know this is probably a very frustrating point in the story to skip a week. *Ducks flying objects* but it was completely unintentional, I swear!_

_I've got the next part all finished and ready to post as soon as I get back__ however, so watch out for something in around two weeks time. In the meantime, I'll guess you'll just have to re-read Parts 1-10 again in preparation for the upcoming Part 11, which could be entitled 'The Breakfast Conversation' but is probably more aptly titled 'The Heart of the Matter'…_

_Till next time then,_

_CharmedBec x_


	11. The Heart of the Matter

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi! I'm back! Here is the update that I promised you. There are certain themes in this chapter that some may find disturbing, but Lindsay was a victim of a fairly horrific crime and I didn't want to make light of that fact.

Anyhow, I will leave you to read on…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 11 **__**– The Heart of the Matter**_

The next morning, Elizabeth Monroe was up at the crack of dawn. After sorting out her husband and excited grand-daughter a picnic breakfast to take with them, she hurried them out the door, knowing that if Lucy was still here when her father arrived, she would insist upon him accompanying her and her grandfather on their ride.

The idea hadn't so far occurred to the little girl and Elizabeth fully intended to keep it that way. Firstly, because things were somewhat awkward between Jack and their son-in-law at present, and secondly - and more importantly - because she knew that her planned talk with Danny that morning was key to her daughter's future happiness.

She had lain in bed unable to sleep for more than an hour last night, unsure of whether she was doing the right thing. She'd eventually concluded that if Lindsay and Danny were to have any chance of repairing their broken marriage then complete honesty was a must for all involved. That meant confiding the painful details of some of the darkest times in their family's personal history to the man who had, to all intents and purposes, become one of them in recent years – even if it was by virtue of matrimony rather than blood.

After seeing Jack and Lucy safely on their way, she quietly ascended the stairs to peek in on her youngest child. Lindsay was dead to the world, her cheek resting on her open palm and her chest rising and falling in the measured cadence of deep sleep. Having seen her daughter through several bouts of debilitating melancholy, Elizabeth knew the modus operandi by now. After a period of emotional insomnia, Lindsay would often sleep for more than twelve hours once the tension inside of her had finally snapped. Today would be no exception, Elizabeth surmised with a small measure of satisfaction. She and Danny would have plenty of time to talk before her daughter awoke.

Back downstairs in the kitchen a few minutes later, she turned the radio on low and set about preparing a breakfast fit for a king. While the coffee gurgled away in the pot, she cooked sausages, bacon and hash-browns under a hot grill, scrambled a mountain of eggs on the stove, and toasted several thick slices of homemade bread as an accompaniment.

"Something smells good," Danny remarked from the doorway, just as she was wondering where he'd gotten to. Dressed casually in a pair of jeans and a blue monogrammed t-shirt, he was standing with one shoulder propped up against the door-frame and his arms folded across his chest.

Smiling at him in greeting, she quickly waved him inside. "Come in, sit, eat," she proclaimed, placing a loaded plate on the table in front of him. "Coffee?" she asked, turning for the pot on the counter.

Danny nodded. "Please." He looked down at his breakfast as she came back to the table and filled his cup with the steaming hot liquid. "You're spoiling me, Beth."

"Nonsense," she told him briskly. "You're a growing boy, and breakfast is the most important meal of the day."

Danny smiled at the 'growing boy' comment. He was on the downward side of thirty-five, hardly a spring chicken. "You sound like my Mama," he said. "She's always intent on feeding me until I burst too."

"Yes, well, great minds think alike," Elizabeth replied with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders. "And you're too thin," she observed critically, taking in his whippet-like frame in one scrutinizing glance, "Despite all that apparent upper body strength you've got going on."

"Your daughter never complained," he told her with aplomb. "In fact she seemed to rather like it."

Elizabeth chuckled. "Well, there's no accounting for taste, I suppose," she bantered back.

Danny laughed. She was so like her daughter sometimes – or was that the other way round? Whatever, it was probably the reason they got on so well to be honest. He'd instantly connected with her on first meeting and their friendship had steadily grown in strength over the intervening years.

If there was one member of the Monroe family who was on his side, it was this woman, but he also knew that if he did anything to hurt Lindsay – unintentionally or otherwise - then she'd close ranks on him in an instant. He wouldn't have expected anything less, of course. That was what being a parent was all about, and if there was one thing that Elizabeth excelled at, it was being a mother to her four children.

After pouring herself a cup of coffee, she brought a plate of toast and eggs topped with one, solitary slice of bacon to the table and sat down opposite him. They ate in companionable silence for a while as Elizabeth tried to figure out where to start.

"At the beginning would be a good place," Danny said as if reading her thoughts.

Elizabeth nodded. "They were inseparable, you know, Lindsay, Kelly, Dana and Sophie. It was like their own little exclusive club, they did everything together. Sometimes I think Lindsay was closer to those girls than she was to her own siblings. That was probably something to do with the age-gap between her and her brothers and sister, I imagine – Brian, Mel and Christopher all arrived close together within a span of four years, while Lindsay came along a few years after them. She was something of an unexpected surprise if you want to know the truth, but a welcome one all the same."

She broke off and smiled. "Funny how history repeats itself, huh?"

"I don't know what you mean," Danny said without missing a beat. "Lucy was totally planned."

Elizabeth laughed. "Is that a pig I see flying by?" she gently teased, and then quickly sobered as she resumed her story. "We'd extended her curfew that night – school was out and two of the girls were going away for the summer so we decided to give her an extra hour of freedom. I don't know whether it would have made a difference if we hadn't – probably not, but we were never quite sure. Lindsay was always a little hazy about the timing of it all. She knew it was getting late, that all of the other customers had left, but she could never pin-point the exact hour it all began."

She paused and took a sip of her coffee. "You know what happened then," she said softly. "You heard some of her testimony and she filled you in on the rest later from what she told me."

Danny nodded. "Just the bare facts though," he clarified. "Nothing of how it really was for her."

Elizabeth nodded. "The first we knew about it was when the police showed up at our door some time after midnight. We were starting to get a little worried – it was nearly an hour past her curfew and she wasn't the kind to flout the rules in that way. I wouldn't say she was perfect, but she was generally an obedient child when it came to the house-rules."

She shook her head. "You have no idea what it's like to be told your daughter is the only survivor of such a dreadful massacre. At first your only feelings are gratitude and relief for the fact that your child is alive, but then comes the guilt because you know that there are four other sets of parents out there who aren't ever going to see their daughters again. Finally comes the worry, the concern – how is she going to cope being witness to something that no fifteen year old should ever have to see? And how is she going to get through it knowing that her three best friends, her entire world, are gone forever."

Elizabeth paused to gather her thoughts. "They took us to the diner in the squad car. We never went inside, of course, and they'd moved Lindsay away from the crime scene before we got there. She was covered in blood, I remember..."

She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, and Danny instinctively reached out to close his fingers around hers. "I think… umm… it seems she had the presence of mind to call 911, but I think she just went to pieces after that. I guess she tried to help them even though she probably knew it was all in vain. She'd had first aid training at school a few weeks before…"

Elizabeth stopped again and shook her head, tears bright and unshed in her eyes. "I mean, obviously she was in shock, but it was like my beautiful girl had been hollowed out from the inside. She was so pale, her eyes so wide and empty-looking… she was just a shell of the happy vibrant teenager she'd been when she'd left the house earlier that evening. I remembered thinking that maybe she was alive physically, but the bastard had killed her emotionally even so."

"Unfortunately, that proved to be horribly correct," she continued with a poignant sigh. "She's never been the same, Danny. She turned into someone that we learned to love just as much, but the daughter we knew died that night along with her friends. I see flashes of her every now and then, especially when she's around you and Lucy, but we lost a child in spite of that and that was very hard for us to accept at the time."

"Of course you feel incredibly guilty for feeling that way, for grieving such a loss when you have your daughter alive in front of you and your friends are preparing to bury theirs in the ground. It took a lot of therapy sessions for me to accept that it was perfectly normal for me to react like that, and that I wasn't betraying Lindsay or them by feeling so bereft."

She broke off and gazed unseeing at the far wall for a moment. "But we aren't supposed to be talking about me," she said determinedly. "You want to hear about Lindsay."

Danny shook his head. "What you went through is part of it too," he said quietly.

Elizabeth gratefully squeezed his fingers in response. "Eventually they took her to the hospital. The doctor checked her out first, and then they brought someone in to… what do you call it? Process her? Isn't that what you do?"

"It's a little different when it comes to victims obviously," Danny explained. "But they're evidence too in some respects so it's unfortunately necessary. We try to be as sensitive as we can under the circumstances…"

Elizabeth nodded. "And she was… the CSI who came – Brianna Macklin. Of course, I didn't know it then, but she ended up being Lindsay's boss years later. Anyway, our baby had been completely mute up until that point - she didn't even cry when her father and I arrived. She immediately started asking questions of that young CSI though – you know, what was she doing and why was she doing it. It seemed so clinical to me, but Lindsay was always an inquisitive girl and smart with it too. I think it helped her to understand the process and Brianna was very patient with her. She explained everything and didn't sugar-coat it, which I admit bothered me at the time, but I can see now it was the right thing for her to do."

"Did they take a rape kit?" Danny asked, a sudden horror making his stomach tighten into painful knots.

His mother-in-law shook her head. "No, no, they didn't have to. I remember Brianna asking her about that actually… Lindsay told her nothing of that nature had happened – that the shooter hadn't even known she was there. I was pretty shocked by the question to be honest. I mean her clothes weren't torn or anything…"

"It'd be procedure," Danny explained. "I guess because she was being communicative, Brianna decided to spare her that," he reasoned. "It's not a very pleasant experience for anyone, but for a traumatised fifteen year old when it wasn't really necessary…"

"I guess I should be grateful for small mercies at least then," Elizabeth concluded.

Danny nodded. "So after that?" he prompted.

"They let us take her home," Elizabeth told him. "She wasn't physically hurt and they felt she'd be more comfortable in her own bed than at the hospital. They said a police psychiatrist would come out to the ranch to speak to her the next day to take a statement, and they gave us some numbers for Victim Support and other survivor groups too. So we took her home with us and put her to bed, but she didn't sleep a wink all night. She just lay there staring up at the ceiling in some kind of catatonic trance. I didn't know what to do, she wouldn't talk to me. In the end, I just sat with her and held her hand until morning."

Elizabeth broke off as her breath hitched into a despairing sob. "No, no, I'm all right," she said, waving off Danny's concern. "You need to know, you need to understand."

"We can take a break, Beth, if you need to."

Elizabeth adamantly shook her head. "No, she's not going to sleep for much longer and there's still so much to tell you." She drew in a deep calming breath and then continued with her story.

"Her brothers and sister turned up then. They were all away at college at the time, but Jack had called them from the hospital. Brian had caught the red-eye into Bozeman, and Mel and Chris had driven through the night to get here. I was still in a state of shock so I didn't know what to think, but they were all for not letting the police speak to her. They felt it was too soon, but Lindsay insisted that she talk to them. She was calm throughout most of the interview until they suggested that she go back to the diner to help jog her memory a little more. I was so angry at that, I remember. The shooting had been all over the news and they'd only just brought out the bodies that morning."

"They wouldn't have taken her there until the clean-up crew had been in," Danny said.

"Yes, I appreciate that now, but at the time I didn't realise. Lindsay's reaction was enough for us to refuse anyway. She panicked – I'd never seen anyone have a proper anxiety attack before and it was awful, just awful. She hardly seemed able to draw breath. She all but closed in on herself, curling into a ball and pulling at her hair. Jack lost it then I remember, threw the cops out of the house. I was worried he'd get arrested, but I think they understood what we were going through and let it alone. They weren't going to get much more out of Lindsay right then anyway."

"Mel was the one who managed to calm her in the end. I guess with her studying medicine and everything, she had some insight into the way the human mind reacts in such situations. She was able to coax her sister out of it and that's when Lindsay broke down and cried for the first time. She just cried… and cried… and cried… at one point I thought she was never going to stop."

Elizabeth paused and brushed away the tears dampening her cheeks. "She needed to let it out though. She was better for it afterwards. How we got through the next few weeks, I'll never know. Lindsay insisted on going to all the funerals. She was barely eating or sleeping by that point, and had lost so much weight she wasn't much more than a skeleton with skin…"

She bit her lip and ran her fingers through her hair, disturbed at the memories. "Mel insisted that we take her to the doctor in the end. Me and Jack - we just wanted to wrap her up in cotton wool and take care of her ourselves, but we weren't equipped to deal with what she was going through. The doctor diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder – put her on medication to help with the anxiety attacks and sorted out therapy for us all too. That helped me and Jack enormously; I don't know how we'd've coped without it. Lindsay either actually – she was in therapy for around eighteen months after the shooting."

"She returned to school after the Christmas break – we'd kept her off during the fall semester, but we knew we'd have to send her back eventually. We made sure she was home-schooled during the time she was absent so she didn't fall too far behind with her studies. That was the one decision we made that I didn't ever second-guess. The more relaxed schedule was much better for her while she was so ill. She'd never have coped if we'd sent her back straight away. I knew we'd done the right thing in keeping her at home for those six months."

"She was pretty much a loner for the rest of her High School years though. She'd lost her best friends and her classmates all saw her as a bit of a freak. I worried for her endlessly, but she threw herself into her studies and just got on with it. When she hit her senior year, she became fixated on a career as a crime scene investigator."

"Brianna had kept in touch with her, you see, and Lindsay was fascinated by the whole forensic process, constantly asking detailed questions about the case and others too. We weren't sure whether it was entirely healthy for her, but it gave her a purpose in life, I suppose. Before then, it was like she'd just been existing, now she was finally starting to live again. Things got a lot easier for her when she went to college. Her peers there were just that little bit older and therefore weren't quite so judgemental about her past. She made friends, began to interact with people her own age again, even acquired her first serious boyfriend much to her father's chagrin."

Elizabeth smiled in spite of the heaviness of the conversation. "I think he was hoping she'd remain a virgin for her entire life," she said.

"Oh, I know _that_ feeling," Danny said with emphasis. "I'm already having nightmares about policing the hoards of hormonal teenage boys landing on my doorstep and Lucy's only four."

"She'll be fourteen before you know it, trust me," Elizabeth said, grateful for the temporary respite from the angst. "And that's when the fun begins…"

Danny shuddered exaggeratedly. "She's not dating until she's at least twenty-five," he resolved.

Elizabeth smiled briefly at that before returning to their previous topic of conversation. "Jack may not have liked it," she said. "But to me it was a relief. She was eighteen, in college – and acting in the way that all healthy young girls do at that time in their lives. She was my daughter and I loved her, but the teenager she was for the last few years of High School was anything but normal. She blossomed at college though, threw off the yoke of her past and gradually transformed herself into the woman she is today."

"The only real set-back came when she and Mark – her first boyfriend - broke up. It was just before summer break and it was like time had rewound several years. She locked herself in her room, barely even spoke to us. Mel was a junior resident working at a hospital in Bozeman by then and she took charge of the situation again, forced her sister to go to the doctor and got her put on another course of anti-depressants and back into therapy. By the time she returned to college in the fall she was well on the road to recovery."

"Did she ever talk to you about that time?" Danny asked curiously, "About how she felt when she and this Mark guy broke up, I mean."

Elizabeth shook her head. "Not in any real detail, no – why do you ask?"

"It was just something she said to me yesterday – or something I said that provoked a totally extreme reaction out of her. I was just wondering how that break-up affected her on a deeper level."

Elizabeth cast her mind back. "It knocked her self-esteem a bit," she recalled. "I remember her asking me what was wrong with her once. Why I thought Mark had decided she wasn't worth the effort."

"So he was the one who broke it off?" Danny asked.

Elizabeth nodded. "So I understand, yes. Lindsay was utterly heartbroken for a while – she'd fallen hard - but I think in the end she realised that it was just one of those things. Some relationships work out, some don't. She was young and had the rest of her life ahead of her to find Mr Right. She was much more cautious when it came to relationships from then on, but I don't think that was necessarily such a bad thing."

"Unless you take it to extremes, of course," Danny pointed out.

"You feel that she was too cautious with you?" Elizabeth questioned.

"About some things, yes. On other levels, no. You were right in what you said about us last night. We _were_ close - but only when we were happy. When things got rocky, it's like she lost all of her faith in us as a couple. I need to know why she reacted like that because if it's not dealt with, I can't honestly see a future for us."

He sighed. "I can't go through this again, Elizabeth. I tried so hard to make it work, but Lindsay just gave up, started talking lawyers and legal separations before we'd even had a chance to put things right between us. I know she eventually realised that she'd made a mistake in reacting like that, but it took her over a year to come to that conclusion. We can't keep filing for a divorce every time things get a little tough though, can we?"

Elizabeth sighed. "I think she just shut down, Danny. Losing her friends in such a brutal and fatalistic way blasted a massive crater right through the middle of her life. She lost almost everything that mattered to her and I think she's afraid of suffering through that kind of pain again. She's always held herself back from people. Until she moved to New York, her friends were few and far between, and her romantic relationships… well, Mark, Simon and you are the only men she's ever let get really close to her."

"Simon was the court officer she was seeing before she accepted the job in New York, right?" Danny queried. "We had the obligatory most significant others conversation years ago," he explained off his mother-in-law's slightly startled look.

Elizabeth nodded. "They broke up about six months before she left."

"And that was what triggered her second bout of depression, right?" Danny deduced. "Last night, you said she'd had a tough time when she was around nineteen – which would be when she and Mark split – and again just before she came to New York? That'd be when she broke up with Simon, I assume?"

Elizabeth's eyes widened at that. "Yes, but I hadn't made the specific connection until you pointed it out. I guess I just assumed that because she was having a difficult time generally, it was harder for her to hold back the pain of the past."

"I think maybe something about being rejected in that way throws her back to that time again," Danny pondered thoughtfully. "It would certainly explain a lot."

"Like what?"

"Like how she always expects the worst. Like how she reads more into what you do and say than what there actually is."

"I don't understand," Elizabeth said in confusion.

"She expects to be rejected, Beth. You said that she asked you that time after her split with Mark what was wrong with her? I think maybe she actually feels that – that there's something fundamentally wrong with her and that's the reason why no man is ever going to truly love her for who she is. She's let me closer than most, but she still held back the part of herself that she feels is, I don't know… corrupted somehow, I guess."

Elizabeth shook her head. "I never realised. I mean she talks to me about things, but I know I don't know everything. I think she doesn't want to upset me. Her therapy sessions were confidential obviously – she was fifteen/sixteen at the time, no longer a child. We wouldn't have wanted to intrude on her privacy in that way, but legally we couldn't anyway."

"Did she ever go back?" Danny asked then. "To the diner, I mean. You said the cops wanted her to go back, but she panicked when they suggested it."

"Which she did when they suggested it to her again several days later too," Elizabeth explained. "No, I don't think she's ever been back. The place is still in business, but Lindsay has always steered clear of it. She won't shop at that end of town, and the only time I've ever known her to get close was when a road was closed once because of flooding and it was the only way to get to where we were going. She refused to walk on that side of the road, I remember, and practically ran past when we got directly opposite."

"She had a panic attack, you mean?"

"No, but she was close to it. Once we were out of the immediate vicinity she calmed down again. But that's not so unusual, is it? Given what happened to her there."

Danny shook his head. "No, but what you've described is a real phobia, Beth, not just an understandable avoidance of a traumatic memory."

"So you think she should go back?"

"I think maybe if she faced up to it, she might realise the actuality is not as bad as her mind makes it out to be. It could help, I don't know. I'm not a therapist, but I do know something about victim support. With a job like mine, you can't avoid it. You're trained to get the best out of witnesses and sometimes that takes delicate handling."

They were both silent for a moment before a creak on the stairs distracted them. "She's awake," Elizabeth said hurriedly, dashing away the remaining tears from her eyes and rising to her feet.

"Hey honey!" she said warmly when her daughter came into the kitchen, barefoot and dressed in a short, skimpy night-dress that left virtually the entire length of her slender arms and legs exposed to the elements.

She assumed Lindsay had just grabbed the first thing that came to hand last night, but the flimsy garment was not exactly appropriate attire when there was a grown man in the room. She shook her head with a smile then, realising how crazy that sounded when the grown man in question was her daughter's husband. It was highly likely that he'd seen her in a whole lot less, and in spite of the previously solemn nature of their breakfast conversation, he was clearly enjoying the view.

Despite the heaviness in her heart, Lindsay felt her body go warm and liquid under the weight of Danny's appreciative gaze. She looked down at herself, sexy had not been her intention but the nightdress didn't leave all that much to the imagination, she had to admit. She flushed a little and shot her estranged husband a censorious look, which prompted a mischievous grin and a low wicked chuckle out of him.

Oh god, how she missed that - the playful banter, the innuendo-filled looks and remarks that had always peppered their everyday conversation, reminding them both of exactly what they were to each other behind closed doors. It communicated love without actual words and made her feel inexplicably cherished. Accepting that as real was something she struggled with on a daily basis though. A fact that she'd thought she'd managed to hide from the people closest to her, but which was now starting to ooze like a festering wound.

She hadn't overheard all of her Mom and Danny's conversation, but she'd heard enough. Their voices had floated out into the hallway just as she reached the bottom step. Her husband's comment that they couldn't keep filing for a divorce every time things get a little tough had stopped her in her tracks, and she'd sat down on the bottom step to listen rather than make her presence known.

Clearly they'd been talking for a while and it quickly became apparent that her well-concealed secrets were beginning to unravel on her, despite her best efforts to keep them hidden. Danny was too smart for his own good that was the trouble. Just like when he was investigating a case, he was slowly piecing together all the bits of evidence and building a fuller picture of her crimes.

She knew she had to face it, but every time she thought about doing so, terror rose within her like tidal wave and she drowned in its torrent. Just the mere thought of going back to the diner filled her with dread. What purpose would it serve really? So she had to learn to be more open with Danny if they were to have any hope of saving their marriage, but she could do that without revisiting the past in such a horrific way…

Couldn't she?

She closed her eyes, knowing that she was kidding herself. It had to be faced. There was no getting away from it. She had to beat it. She had to somehow find the strength within to confront what she feared the most.

"Linds?"

She felt Danny's hand settle in the small of her back and she let out a startled gasp in response. His familiar touch burned through the thin material of her night-dress to heat the skin beneath. She swayed in reaction, suddenly light-headed, and his grip tightened.

"Sit down," he urged.

She allowed him to lead her to a chair and sat down as he lowered himself into the seat beside her. "I love you so much," she told him before she could stop herself.

She saw bewildered emotion spring into his blue-eyed gaze at her heartfelt declaration. Her own eyes remained round and liquid and fixed on his.

"Lindsay…" His voice was shaky, uncertain.

"Please just tell me that there's hope," she pleaded, heedless of her mother's presence in the room. "I need to know that there's hope…"

Danny hesitated and she instinctively started to draw back. She'd put her heart on the line and now he was going to stamp all over it…

"No," he insisted, cupping the side of her face in his warm palm and bringing her attention back to him. "Don't assume. Just don't, Lindsay. You can't do that anymore, you can't. Just listen and hear, okay?"

"Listen and hear what?"

"There's hope, of course there's god-damn hope!" His tone was frustrated. "Do you honestly think I'd be here if there wasn't? There are no promises though, sweetheart, not yet. We've a long way to go before I can offer you that."

"You're torturing me…"

"No!" He shook his head in denial. "I'm trying my best to do the right thing. If we go back into this, it'll be for life, Lindsay. I won't accept anything less, and I refuse to make you any promises until I'm one hundred percent sure. You have to meet me halfway on this, babe. I know it's going to be hard, but I need that from you. Lucy needs that from you. I'll be here to see you through it, but in the end, you have to find the strength within yourself to fight for this."

"I'm trying…"

"I know you are and that's good. Let's just take it one day at a time though, huh?"

He kissed her forehead and then drew back to look down into her eyes. She looked up at him, her gaze tormented with confusion. He wanted to give her something, a symbol of the hope that she'd requested of him. Acting on impulse, he dipped his head and pressed his mouth to hers.

The kiss was chaste but heartfelt. Their lips clung together like a bee extracting sweet nectar from a pollinating flower and then parted with a moist pop. It was the first real kiss they'd shared in a very long time. Lindsay had kissed him that time in her apartment a couple of weeks ago, but it had been a one-sided affair and a symbol of desperation on her part.

"Now," he said, clearing his throat and taking a non-too-subtle peek downwards. "I think I'm going to go and find you a robe to wear, or I'm going to need a cold shower before long."

The tension broke and Lindsay laughed, swatting him on the arm. "Danny!" she protested, her cheeks flushing pink. Grinning widely, he winked suggestively at her and then sauntered out of the room.

"Well apparently I still turn him on," she mused to herself and then suddenly realised her Mom was present. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded," she quickly said.

"No?" Elizabeth's eyebrows rose. "Why ever not? He's a fine-looking man. Nice butt too."

"MOM!"

Elizabeth chuckled. "What? I'm fifty-eight not dead. And your father and I have been married for forty years and we still look at each other that way…"

"Okay and that's like _way_ too much information at this hour in the morning," Lindsay said, squirming with embarrassment. "Or any hour of the day come to think of it," she added.

Elizabeth smiled. "You want some eggs and toast?" she enquired. "I've got bacon too."

"No, I'll probably just…" Lindsay stopped and then nodded. "Eggs and toast sounds good," she said softly. She wasn't really feeling the inclination to eat right now, but knew she had to. She'd already lost too much weight and couldn't afford to lose anymore.

"Danny's been here a while," she commented mildly, taking in the cleaned plates and empty cups of coffee on the table in front of her.

Her mother nodded as she cracked a couple of eggs into a bowl and began to whisk. "He wanted to know how it was for us… you know, back then. He feels it has some bearing on what the two of you are going through now. Is he mistaken?"

Lindsay wanted to deny it, but couldn't. "No," she said simply.

"Good, I guess I made the right choice then," her mother said. "I know you might feel as if I've betrayed your confidence but…"

"It's okay, Mom," Lindsay cut in. "I get it. It was perhaps best that it came from you anyway, I don't know how easily I'd've gotten the words out."

"You still have to talk to him, honey. I can only give him the background; it's up to you to fill in the blanks. I know it's hard, but he's asking you to trust him with that confidence."

"So it's a test then?"

Elizabeth regarded her carefully. "He asked you not to assume. What did he mean by that?"

When her daughter didn't answer and tellingly avoided her insightful gaze, she sighed. "Is that what you do, Lindsay? Assume the way he feels rather than allowing him to tell you himself?"

"I…" Lindsay started, but broke off not knowing what to say.

"Is that what you did a year ago?" her mother went on relentlessly. "Acted on what you thought he felt rather than what he actually did?"

"Yes! I already told you that didn't I?"

"No, you told me that you'd made a hasty decision. That it turned out that he was innocent after all. That's not really the same thing, is it?"

"Mom…" Lindsay pleaded. "Can we not do this now? Please?"

Elizabeth sadly shook her head. "I don't think it's a test, honey," she said. "But it will be if you think of it that way. You can't be constantly asking for proof of someone's love, you know. At some point, they're bound to fall short of your expectations. We're human not infallible. You just have to accept it, trust that it's real, and know that even though there are times that you'll both regret your choice; nine times out of ten you'll be glad you made it."

"Do you ever regret marrying Dad?" Lindsay asked curiously.

"No, but I have wondered why I did once or twice over the years. All marriages go through their ups-and-downs though, but you stick together, keep the faith and rise above the bad times."

"It's not always that easy…"

"No, but nothing worthwhile in life is ever easy. If it was; how would you know its true value?"

"So you think I ran away?"

"It doesn't matter what I think. Do _you_ think that you ran away?"

"Yes, but sometimes it's easier to do that than face the alternative."

"Which is?"

"I…" Lindsay closed her eyes, reeling back as her tortured mind provided her with the answer she wasn't ready to hear. "I don't know."

Elizabeth sensed that she did, but her daughter looked so stricken, she decided not to push it. It was with Danny that Lindsay needed to explore that painful truth. For once she would have to curb her motherly instincts, stay on the side-lines and allow them to figure it out for themselves.

"You want more eggs?" she asked her son-in-law, glad of the distraction when he came back into the kitchen with the robe for Lindsay.

Danny laughed. "You are joking aren't you? Didn't you feed me enough already?" He looked over at his wife and grinned. "I think your Mom is trying to beef me up, Montana." He flexed his right arm. "Don't I work out enough?"

"Actually she thinks you've got a nice butt," Lindsay told him candidly. She glanced at her mother. "You feed him too much and it's gonna get flabby," she pointed out.

"Okaay," Danny drawled. "So a change in topic might be a good thing right about now."

"My thoughts exactly," Elizabeth agreed a little pink-faced. She pointed a spatula at her daughter in censorship. "You are a very naughty girl."

Lindsay giggled. "Call it payback for reminding me that you and Dad still have sex, which is like _eww_ by the way."

"Actually, I find it rather enjoyable…"

"Ahem! Girls? Change in topic?" Danny quickly cut in.

His wife and mother-in-law exchanged an almost identical look.

"He's a sensitive boy," Elizabeth said with a pitying shake of her head.

Lindsay nodded solemnly. "He had a very sheltered up-bringing," she explained.

Danny dropped his head down onto the table-top with a plaintive groan. "Lucy's gonna grow up exactly the same, isn't she?" he complained.

"You can't fight genetics, babe," Lindsay reminded him and then laughed, prompting him to lift his head from his arms and smile warmly at her.

Her mother put the plate of finished eggs down on the table in front of her while she was still basking in that glow. "Eat," she instructed.

Buoyed by the playful banter and Danny's earlier declaration of hope, Lindsay picked up her fork and did just that…

_**To be continued…**_

_**A/N2:**__ Okay so I wasn't exactly intending to end this chapter on quite such a light note, but it just flowed from my fingers and onto the page. Sometimes you just have to smile through your troubles, huh? Plus, I have a way too vivid imagination… LOL!_

_Until next time then... CharmedBec x_


	12. The Root of All Fears

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi all! New chapter for you :-)

Useless bit of trivia: for the purposes of this story, I didn't want Lindsay's parents to live in the city of Bozeman. As you'll see from this chapter, I've written it as if they live in a relatively small community nearby. I've done a bit of research and, fortunately for me, there are several towns that fit the bill. I've not picked any specific one here, but at least it's not a completely unrealistic scenario.

Anyway, I'll leave you to read on.

**OOOOOO**

_**Part **__**12 – The Root of all Fears**_

_**The next day…**_

"Daddy, are you sure you and Mommy don't want to come too?" Lucy asked him for perhaps the tenth time that morning.

Danny smiled. "I'm sure, honey," he assured her, and then watched as her expression predictably fell. "Come here a minute okay?" he said, beckoning to her with a crooked finger.

Lucy obediently came to stand in front of him. Reaching out, he hooked his hands under her arms and effortlessly lifted her onto his lap. "Now listen," he said, lowering his voice for effect. "Grams and Gramps want to take you on a special trip – just the three of you. We don't want to disappoint them, do we?"

"No," Lucy agreed with a solemn shake of her head.

"They love you very much…"

"I love them too," Lucy quickly interjected lest he think that she didn't.

"I know you do, pumpkin, which is why you're going to be a good girl and do what they want, huh? You're gonna have a good time, right?"

Lucy nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, we're going to go up into the mountains to stay in a cabin. Grams is going to cook dinner over a fire and we're going to see lots and lots of animals and play snap and everything!"

Danny chuckled. "There see, you don't need me and Mommy there at all. You can have the best time all by yourselves."

Lucy considered. "You'll look after Mommy right?" she said quietly. "She's sad a lot right now so you haft to remember to make her laugh so she doesn't cry."

Danny pressed a light kiss to her temple before replying. "I'll try my best, baby," he murmured even though he imagined keeping that promise might be easier said than done.

"You mustn't worry so much though, sweetie," he added, stroking a gentle hand over her silky cap of honey-blonde hair. "Sometimes grown-ups get sad like Mommy, but it doesn't last forever and before you know it they're happy again."

"You promise?"

"I promise," he said, hoping fervently that that was true. He didn't like to lie to his daughter, but he couldn't think of any other way to reassure her at the moment.

Sliding a finger under her chin, he tilted her little heart-shaped face up to his and dropped a slightly wet kiss on the tip of her nose – a kiss she immediately wiped away with the back of her hand and a faintly disgusted expression. He grinned and set her back down on her feet again. Normal service resumed.

"Now go," he said, patting her gently on the bottom to prompt her on her way. "I thought Grams asked you to pick out the toys you wanted to take with you."

"I'm only allowed four," she told him, "One for every year of my age."

"Only four?" he asked with wide eyes. "Oh no! How are you going to choose?"

Lucy giggled. "You're silly, Daddy," she said, picking up the toy horse that Jack had bought her at the airport before skipping out of the room in search of the rest of her carefully chosen selections.

Danny tipped his head back against the sofa cushions and closed his eyes. Since the emotional breakfast conversation the previous morning, he and Lindsay had taken a temporary respite from their marriage troubles and concentrated their attention on their little daughter instead. After Lucy had returned from her ride with her grandfather late morning, they had loaded her into his rental car and taken her out to lunch as an additional treat. When they'd returned around mid-afternoon, Lindsay's sister, Mel and her three children had been there along with her sister-in-law, Selena and her two kids. Jack and his son, Brian had headed into town to meet up with some buddies for a round of golf, leaving the women and children behind at the ranch.

While Lucy and her numerous cousins burned off energy in the large, picket-fenced garden, the three women chatted in the kitchen and out on the deck, whilst Danny lazed in the swing-seat nearby and occasionally joined in with the children's energetic play. The game of softball that he organised was a particular hit and he was pleased to note that his little daughter had quite an arm on her – not to mention one hell of a competitive spirit when the chips were down.

The only slight fly in the ointment was the conversation he'd overheard between Mel and her mother when he'd gone inside to use the bathroom at one point…

"_What the hell is __**he**__ doing here?" he heard his sister-in-law hiss to Elizabeth when he passed by the kitchen on his way back outside. _

"_Melinda…" Elizabeth admonished, the use of her daughter's full name effectively communicating her displeasure at the younger woman's confrontational attitude._

"_He broke her heart, Mom."_

"_And she broke his too by all accounts," her mother returned calmly. "Were you not listening the other day when your sister explained the situation?"_

"_She was just making excuses for him because she's still in love with him," Mel retorted hotly. "And I don't think that's particularly healthy for her either by the way. She's on god-damn medication again, for Christ's sake!"_

"_That isn't Danny's fault."_

"_Who else's is it__ then?"_

"_Now listen," Elizabeth said sharply. "I know you mean well, but don't you go sticking in your nose where it's not wanted. The situation is not as cut and dried as you might think, and your sister will not thank you for your interference, believe me. They're trying to work through their problems so just leave them to it and mind your own business."_

"_Dad's not happy about him being here though, is he?" Mel said then, not giving up despite her mother's chiding._

_Elizabeth waved that off. "That's just Jack. He's full of bluster, __but do you honestly think that if he was truly that anti, he would have let Danny step one foot across the threshold yesterday? If he was that unhappy about it, he would have sent him on his way with a firm boot up his backside before he could even blink."_

_Slight__ly uncomfortable with his inadvertent eaves-dropping, Danny moved quickly out of earshot and went back to re-join the others in the garden. _

"_Cookie?" Lindsay asked__ as he stepped out onto the deck. _

_She offered him a plate of the freshly baked sweet treats to choose from. He selected one from the top of the heap and took a generous bite. It was pleasantly warm from the oven and the chocolate chunks were still partially melted inside as a result. "It's good," he said with an appreciative nod, savouring the smooth buttery taste on his tongue._

"_Of course, I made them," Lindsay __told him with aplomb._

"_How much do your family actually know?" he asked __her then, seeing that they were alone for perhaps the first time since their rather fraught exchange in the bathroom two days previous. Elizabeth and Mel were still busy in the kitchen, while Selena stood out on the grass, deftly refereeing a dispute between her youngest son and Mel's eldest boy over whose turn it was to play with the remote control car. _

"_About what?" Lindsay said as she poured juice into plastic cups__ for the kids. _

"_About us," he explained. "A__bout why we split, I mean."_

_Lindsay sighed. "I let them think what they wanted to think at the time because it was__ just easier that way," she told him. "I've set the record straight now though so you don't need to worry about that."_

"_And do they know about… well, before?"_

_Lindsay shook her head. "No, or at least not the full details anyway. That remains between us, Danny. It's nobody's business but ours. My family… they wouldn't really understand the situation."_

"_You mean they'd think you were crazy for giving me a second chance?"_

"_No I…" Lindsay hesitated for a moment before continuing. "It would just complicate the issue that's all, and I think we could really do without that right now, don't you?"_

_He nodded. "It's complicated enough already," he agreed._

"_Exactly," Lindsay returned__, her expression grave._

"_Uncle Danny?" a piping voice came from nearby. _

_They __turned to see Mel's middle child, Josh approaching. The eight year old held a battered baseball mitt and ball in his hands. "Can you teach me to pitch like you did Seth?" he asked, referring to his elder brother. "I got try-outs for Little League soon and he says you're the best - that you used to play for the Yankees and everything!"_

_Lindsay chuckled. "I think your achievements have been a little over-inflated there, babe," she murmured to Danny, who threw her a quick grin before reluctantly acquiescing to the boy's request. _

_He was loath to break off the conversation with his wife just then – it felt as if they were finally making some headway at last. They were going to have to find some means of spending time alone together pretty soon, he realised. There really wouldn't be all that much point to him being here otherwise. He'd be better off back home in New York…_

Of course, Elizabeth had solved that particular dilemma for him yesterday evening by suddenly announcing the overnight trip that she and her husband intended to take Lucy on the following day. She'd made it sound like it had all been planned for ages, but he knew that it had taken some fast talking on her part to persuade Jack to give him and Lindsay some precious time to themselves.

His father-in-law's agreement to the scheme was yet more proof of his silent support for the continuation of their marriage however. Mel's hostile attitude had saddened Danny - seeing as the two of them used to get on like a house on fire - but his spirits had been lifted by Elizabeth's comment about Jack not being quite as opposed as he first appeared.

He hadn't really looked at it in that way, but he could see now that it was true. Anyone who even had the slightest potential of hurting Lucy would be ejected from his home pretty damn quick. Even though she was all grown-up, his father-in-law was no different when it came to Lindsay in that respect. It wasn't out-and-out approval, but it wasn't a complete denunciation either. Somehow that made him feel marginally better about things.

Lindsay's escalating nerves were the only remaining impediment therefore. She'd taken off an hour earlier, pleading some errand in town as an excuse to get away from the ranch for a while. He could understand that she wasn't quite ready to face two full days in his company with the way things were between them, but he hoped that she wouldn't avoid him completely even so. She'd promised she'd be back by lunchtime and he was going to hold her to that. If she failed to show then he'd go out looking for her and be damned.

They had to talk. They were not going to get anywhere if they didn't. She said she wanted him back. Well then, she was going to have to pluck up her courage and fight for what she wanted…

**OOOOOO**

Her palms were sweating - more than that, her heart was racing uncontrollably while the edges of her vision were beginning to blur.

'_Come on Lindsay_' she coached herself as her feet stubbornly remained super-glued to the sidewalk. '_You have to do this. Stop being such a wimp and just get on with it._'

In a daze, she stepped off the kerb… and then immediately jumped back at the warning blast of a car horn. The vehicle whizzed past, its driver gesturing rudely at her, but she ignored him and focused on the task at hand instead. Taking a few deep breaths, she forced herself to move once more.

One foot in front of the other, across the street and onto the opposite sidewalk…

She stopped again; blood rushing in her ears and terrified whimpers building in the back of her throat. She swallowed them down, drew in slow calming breaths until she'd regained control of her emotions, and then began to walk again.

One foot in front of the other, that was the way…

She was at the door now. Her hand rose of its own accord even as her mind reeled back from the reality of what she was about to do. The bell above the door jangled at her entry. She expected everyone to turn and stare, but they all continued about their business as if there was nothing untoward going on, as if she wasn't returning to the scene of the crime for the first time since that terrible night sixteen years ago.

The décor had been renewed some time over the past decade or more, she noted as she stood uncertainly just inside the doorway, but the diner was easily recognisable in spite of that. The basic layout was the same – the long serving counter and old-fashioned till, the tables and booths, the juke-box against one wall, the door in the far corner leading to the bathrooms…

Feeling a little calmer, she took a few cautious steps forward. Maybe Danny had been right. This wasn't so bad, was it?

The bell above the door sounded again and she whipped around in a panic. A small group of laughing teenagers entered, closely followed by a lone dark-haired man in his twenties… She tried to cry out a warning, but the cautionary shout stuck in her throat as her chest became tight and breathing became almost impossible.

Above the roaring sound in her ears, she vaguely heard someone say her name, but then her world faded to black and she knew no more…

**OOOOOO**

_Briing! Briing!_

Danny startled awake as the shrill sound of the telephone cut through the air. Lucy and her grandparents had left forty-five minutes earlier so he was alone in the house. He'd only meant to close his eyes for a second, but had somehow managed to doze off in the interim.

He hesitated, unsure of whether to answer it or not. The machine would probably pick up... or he could take a message. Something propelled him out into the hall before he even knew what he was doing.

He picked up the receiver and lifted it to his ear. "Hello? Monroe residence."

"Oh!" The female voice on the other end sounded a little taken-aback at the sound of the unfamiliar voice. "Umm, is Elizabeth or Jack there?"

"No, no, they've gone away for the night. Can I take a message?"

"No I… I guess I should probably call Mel instead. It's Lindsay, you see…"

Danny went cold. "What about her?" he demanded. "Is she hurt?"

"I don't think…"

"I'm her husband, just tell me, okay?"

"I don't know why she did it…" The woman sounded bewildered. "I mean what would be the reason for her to put herself through such a thing?"

"Through what? What did she do?" Danny asked, the words tumbling over themselves in his haste to discover what was happening. "God damn it! Just tell me what's going on."

"There's no need to be so rude," the woman primly admonished.

"I know, I'm sorry," he quickly apologised. "You just have me worried that's all. Lindsay's not really been herself lately."

"Maybe that's the reason then…"

"The reason for what?" Danny asked. His body was taut with tension, but, for Lindsay's sake, he tamped down the urge to give vent to his frustration and tried to keep his voice calm and measured. Impatience wasn't going to get him the information on his wife's whereabouts that he needed.

"She went into Benny's," the woman explained.

"Benny's?"

"Benny's Diner – it's the place where… well, you know."

Danny closed his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I know."

"At first she seemed okay, but then the colour just drained from her face and she keeled over."

Danny's heart skipped a beat. "She fainted?"

"Yes – I got Jim to carry her to my shop. I thought we ought to get her away from the diner. I was going to call a doctor, but she's insistent that she doesn't need one. She says she'll be fine in a few minutes, but she's still horribly pale and she's visibly shaking. I thought it best to call Elizabeth and Jack under the circumstances."

"Keep her with you and I'll be there as soon as I can," Danny instructed. "You're at your shop, you say?"

"Yes, Holly's Emporium – it's about five doors down from Benny's on Main Street."

"Okay," Danny nodded, trying to recall the layout of the small town that he'd only visited a few times. His memory for detail helped him with that and he thought he knew where to go. "I'll see you shortly."

Twenty-five minutes later, he was striding purposefully down the sidewalk towards the small boutique shop that appeared to sell an eclectic mix of antique knick-knacks and vintage clothing from the looks of the display in the window. As he entered through the main door, he breathed in the floral scent of the orange-blossom potpourri which fragranced the place and felt instantly uncomfortable on entering such an obviously female domain. The startled look a couple of the customers shot his way only added to that feeling. Ignoring them, he approached the pretty teenager sitting behind the counter instead.

"Hello, I'm Danny Messer," he introduced himself. "I'm here to pick up Lindsay."

"Oh my!" the young girl breathed, fixing her kohl-rimmed green eyes on his face. "You're from New York."

"So they tell me," he said a little impatiently. He wasn't in the mood for humouring silly school-girl crushes right now. "Lindsay?" he prompted again when the girl continued to stare openly at him rather than tell him where his wife was located.

"Oh!" The girl blinked and roused herself from her stupor. "She's in the back with Holly. You can go through." She waved him towards the back of the shop with a vague gesture of her hand. Her fingernails were painted a bright metallic green, he noted.

Turning away from the counter, Danny made his way to the rear of the store, and stepped through the curtain of beaded tassels that blocked the entrance-way to the staff-only quarters. His eyes darting this way and that, he quickly took cognisance of the a pokey office on the right and what looked like kitchen facilities directly in front of him, before his attention zeroed in on the small lounge area to the left.

Lindsay was sitting on a red velvet-covered pouf with what looked and smelled like a cup of herbal tea in her hands. A woman who appeared to be in her mid-forties sat next to her on the long, low sofa.

"Hello – I'm Holly," she said in a rich contralto voice, rising to her feet and holding out her right hand in greeting as he came into the room.

She was dressed in a rainbow-hued maxi-dress, while a collection of thin bracelets adorned her slim wrists and a long-beaded necklace hung about her slender neck. Her hair was the colour of buttermilk, and coiled up into a loose topknot with a few wispy strands left free to frame her strikingly beautiful and mostly unlined face.

"Danny Messer." He shook her hand absently, his attention firmly focused on his pale-as-a-ghost wife.

"Danny?" Lindsay's voice sounded bewildered as he knelt down in front of her and closed his hands over hers. Her fingers were ice-cold and trembling despite the warmth of the drink she held. "W-what are you doing here?"

"What do you think I'm doing here?" he told her gently. "What an earth were you thinking of, Linds?"

"You said it would be better if I faced it," she said faintly.

"No, I…" he started to deny and then stopped when he realised he had – to Elizabeth the other morning when they'd thought Lindsay was asleep. "You heard," he realised.

She nodded. "Some, not all," she admitted.

"Jesus Lindsay! I didn't mean on your own for Christ's sake! I meant with help, with the guidance of a counsellor even."

"You were right though," she said quietly. "It wasn't as bad as I thought, but it was still bad." She broke off with a shudder. "I thought he had a gun – he didn't though, did he?"

She turned to Holly who looked confused by the question. "I'm sorry, honey – I don't know what you mean."

"The guy who came in behind those kids," Lindsay whispered. "I thought he was going to kill them." Her eyes filled and her bottom lip began to tremble. "I'm seeing things that aren't there!"

"No baby, you're just reacting to your own trauma," Danny said soothingly. "The mind can play cruel tricks sometimes."

Lindsay looked suddenly panicked then. "You didn't call anyone else, did you?" she demanded of Holly.

The older woman shook her head. "No, I called your Mom and Dad, but your husband here answered instead."

"They left with Lucy over an hour ago," Danny explained.

Lindsay nodded. "Okay, okay… I don't want to you to call anyone else," she repeated. "My family… they fuss too much, I feel like I can't breathe sometimes."

"They care about you, honey." Holly gently told her. "I was around at the time; I know what it was like for them – for the whole town, but especially for them and the families of those other poor girls."

Lindsay turned her gaze on Danny. "I was the only one," she told him, her voice sounding a mere echo of its normal self. "It was too much pressure... I was the only one."

Danny nodded, understanding what she was trying to say, even if she wasn't being particularly eloquent about it. She'd been the focus of a whole community's grief and it had been too much weight for the traumatized teenager to carry. He brushed a stray lock of her hair away from her eyes and leaned forward to press a kiss to the centre of her brow.

"Come on, let's go home," he said, taking the tea-cup from her hands and helping her to her feet.

"Thank-you," he said gratefully to Holly, as he tucked Lindsay closely into his side with a firm arm around her waist.

Holly nodded. "No problem." She reached out and stroked a gentle hand over Lindsay's cheek. "You take care of yourself now, honey."

Lindsay stared at her glassy-eyed, but nodded nonetheless before looking plaintively at Danny, her expression pleading with him to take her home.

"You can go out the back if you want," Holly told them, "To the left, and through the kitchen."

Danny nodded to her and then steered Lindsay out of the room. She still seemed a little unsteady on her feet, but he didn't want to draw undue attention to them by carrying her to the car. He knew she'd hate that, plus it was a small town and something of that nature was bound to get back to one of her siblings sooner or later.

When he had her settled in the passenger seat of his sedan around five minutes later, another thought occurred to him.

"Where did you leave your Mom's car?" he asked. "I'll need to get someone to pick it up or you'll end up with a ticket."

"No, I don't want my family to know about this," Lindsay said quickly.

"Linds…" he protested gently.

She shook her head. "No please – just don't tell them."

"All right, what about the kid who looks after the stables then?"

"Ethan?"

"Yeah – will he be working today?"

Lindsay considered it. "I think so," she said slowly.

Danny nodded. "Good, so I'll ask him when we get back."

Lindsay had lost interest in the conversation the minute she was reassured that her family wouldn't get to know about her mini-meltdown however. "Okay," she said numbly, resting her head against the window and wearily closing her eyes.

Danny reached over and tenderly squeezed her fingers before he turned over the engine and deftly pulled out of the parking spot. Twenty minutes later, the car was crunching back down the driveway to the Monroe property.

"Have you got your Mom's keys?" Danny asked as they exited the vehicle via opposite doors.

The stable-boy Ethan's motorbike was parked nearby, his helmet hanging over the handle-bars. Nice machine, Danny noted absently as he waited for Lindsay to dig out the keys from her purse. She dropped them into his out-stretched palm and then looked at him expectantly, waiting for further instructions it seemed.

"I'll go and talk to the kid," he told her gently. "Why don't you go on inside? I'll be there in a minute, I promise."

Barely acknowledging that he'd spoke, Lindsay turned for the house and began to make her way somewhat woodenly up the porch steps to the door. He waited until she'd gone inside and then headed determinedly for the stable block. When he returned to the house ten minutes later, he found her curled up on the sofa in the main living area, gut-wrenching sobs shaking her entire body and sounding loud and heart-rending in the relative quiet of the room.

"Lindsay…"

He hurried over to kneel down on the floor beside the sofa, reaching out a hand to stroke his fingers through her scattered hair, which was already damp around the temples from her copious tears.

"He killed them all, Danny!" she sobbed.

"I know, baby, I know."

"I loved them so much – why did they have to go away? Why was I the only one left, Danny? Why?"

"I don't know; I wish I did. Sometimes bad things happen for no rhyme or reason," he told her.

"Come on, sit up a bit," he said, rising from his prone position on the floor and settling on the sofa next to her.

She immediately burrowed against him like Lucy sometimes did when she was scared or upset, and he instinctively closed his arms around her. Holding her close, he turned his face into her hair and shushed her quietly while she tried to contain her grief. Eventually her sobs died down and she relaxed against him, her fingers clutching at his t-shirt and her head resting intimately over his heart.

"Mom says I've got to tell you," she finally said, breaking the weighty silence that had settled over them.

Danny sighed. "You have to want to tell me, Linds," he told her wearily.

"I know, I know, and I do… kind of. It's not you that's the problem, I swear, it's just… this is so hard, Danny."

"I know it is, but I'm not expecting a dissertation, babe."

She laughed a little at that. "I'd probably be better at that," she joked. "I'm known for my demonstrations, you know."

Danny chuckled and pressed another kiss into her hair. "Except this isn't a case, Lindsay, this is you."

"I'm afraid… afraid that you'll have the answers that I don't."

"The answers to what?" he enquired.

"What's wrong with me… why I was left behind… why he didn't choose me?"

"You think I'm crazy," she went on when Danny's only response was palpable shock.

"I… I think you've gotten it a little twisted around somewhere along the line. Shouldn't it be why them rather than why not me?"

"Everyone looked at me with such accusing eyes, like I didn't deserve… like it should have been me and not them. They didn't want me there, but I had to go, I _had _to… They were my best friends, my very best friends… They were all so much more worthy of life than me though."

"Don't say that, that's not true."

"You didn't know them, Danny," she accused.

"No, but I know you…"

Lindsay let out a derisive snort. "Yeah, and I'm such a great specimen of a human being. Not. How can you say that after everything I've put you through? I'm totally screwed up."

"You're a little screwed up, yeah," Danny agreed. "But who wouldn't be after what you went through."

She tilted her head to look up into his face. "You hated me at one point."

He shook his head. "No, no, I never hated you. I was very angry and phenomenally frustrated with you at times, but I never hated you. Not once, not ever."

"But you had to have wondered why you bothered even so…"

"Like Mark and Simon did, you mean?"

Lindsay visibly folded in on herself at that. "I don't want to talk about them," she said defensively.

Danny sighed in resignation. "No, no, I know you don't, but I think we're going to have to at some point."

Abruptly sitting up, Lindsay wrapped her arms protectively around her middle. "Why?" she asked in a harsh tone.

"Because I think it has a lot to do with how you react to me," he told her calmly. "Look at you; it took just the mere mention of their names for you to slam the walls up around me."

Lindsay looked crushed. "I'm sorry; I guess I react before I think."

"I know, and we need to work on that, but we're getting ahead of ourselves here. We don't have to deal with everything all at once. I think we need to rewind a little. Tell me what it was like for you after the shooting - in the immediate aftermath, I mean."

"My Mom already told you that."

"No, she didn't. She told me what happened, she told me how _she_ felt about everything that you went through, but we're talking about you now. What did you mean before when you said 'everyone looked at me with accusing eyes'?"

"I…" Lindsay closed her eyes and swallowed the painful lump in her throat. "I don't know how to do this, Danny," she confessed miserably.

He used the pad of his thumb to wipe away the single tear that rolled down her cheek. "What are you afraid of?" he asked.

"That you'll…" She sucked in a deep breath and then forced out the dreaded words, "That you'll think less of me somehow. That if I say the wrong thing, it'll destroy what's remaining between us and be the reason that you walk away for good."

Danny frowned. "You think I'm that judgemental?" he enquired. "Such an insensitive clod that I'd be so unfeeling to what you went through?"

"Oh no, no," Lindsay gasped, horrified. "See I'm doing it already! I'm messing everything up without meaning to."

"You're not messing anything up," Danny assured her.

Reaching out, he took her small hands in his bigger ones and looked deep into her eyes to hold her gaze while he spoke. "Listen to me – we work with the victims of crime every day. I'm not ignorant of the effect that has on people's lives. If you worry so much about saying the right thing then your story is going to get skewed into a false light. That's so much worse than anything you might inadvertently tell me in open honesty, trust me. How can I really understand if I don't know the complete truth?"

"What if the truth's more than you can handle?" Lindsay countered.

"Lindsay, if we can't find our way back to each other, I promise you it'll be nothing to do with what you tell me now," Danny told her firmly. "It'll be because we can't resolve the issues brought to light by what you tell me."

"Which amounts to the same thing in the end," she pointed out.

"And how is that any worse than where we're at?" Danny rebutted. "Our relationship isn't just going to magically heal itself, is it? So what exactly have you got to lose here? I don't mean to be harsh, but our marriage is over if you can't talk to me. They'll be nowhere else for us to go. I may as well confirm that appointment with my lawyer to go over the final divorce papers and be done with it."

"W-what appointment?" Lindsay stammered.

Danny swore under his breath, he hadn't meant to raise the subject like that. "I'm sorry, that was crass…" He shrugged apologetically. "You're not the only one who's capable of saying the wrong thing in the heat of the moment, you know. My lawyer called me the other day, but it's not what I want, okay? I want to go back to New York in a few days time and tell him to put the whole thing on hold because we're going to try to work things out."

"And how easy is that going to be with the threat of divorce hanging over our heads all the time?" Lindsay asked.

"No worse than having to go through all the legal stuff from scratch if we can't make it work," Danny pointed out. "Calling off the divorce is a huge decision, Lindsay. It's not something we can decide in a few short days when we've essentially been living separate lives for over a year. If things turn out the way I hope, we can go home with a solid commitment to work towards a permanent reconciliation though. That's a start and at least, isn't it?"

"And is that honestly what you want?" she asked. "Or do you think you should make the effort for Lucy's sake?"

"If I was doing this just for Lucy then there wouldn't be a snowball's chance in hell of it working out," Danny retorted. "I'm doing this for us, Lindsay, because I believe there can still be an 'us' and I'm not ready to let go of that possibility yet."

Lindsay was quiet as she absorbed that. "I'm stalling again, aren't I?" she eventually said.

Danny smiled at the somewhat rueful question. "I would say so, yeah. I understand why, but it's not really very constructive, is it? Just take a deep breath and jump in is my advice."

"Feet first or head-first?" she asked with a quirk of a smile.

"Whichever is easiest," he replied calmly.

Lindsay nodded. "Okay, I can do this," she said a little nervously.

"I know you can," Danny told her with conviction.

Taking a firmer grip on his hand, Lindsay closed her eyes, gathered every last bit of courage she possessed and threw herself into the abyss...

_**To be continued…**_

_A/N2: __There may be a slightly longer gap than usual between chapters for a few weeks because, with my holiday and a mental block I'm having with one of the scenes in the next chapter, I'm a bit behind schedule. I usually have early drafts of the next two chapters finished by the time I post, but I've only written about half of that so far._

_Luckily, I have plenty of free time this weekend so it all depends on how the muse goe__s. I wanted to make sure I concentrated on the new stuff though, so I'm putting up this chapter now. I can occasionally get into a cycle of endlessly editing something and not really improving it in any way so posting now will prevent that!_

_Anyway, till next time… CharmedBec x_


	13. Her Castle in the Clouds

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi all – new update for you. A little later than usual, but not quite as late as I thought it might be.

Also, I just wanted to take the opportunity to say a big thank-you for all the phenomenal support given to this story. It has kept me motivated and consequently kept the updates regular in spite of the annoying case of writer's block with this chapter! The next part should be up in around a week and a half from now, and then we should be back on track for the normal weekly updates (fingers crossed).

Anyway, on with the show…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part **__**13 – Her Castle in the Clouds**_

_**Sixteen years earlier…**_

_She __gazed at her reflection in the mirror in front of her. Her long hair was neatly contained within a sleek ponytail and secured with a turtle-shell barrette at the nape of her neck. Her simple black cotton dress had a round gathered neckline, a pinched-in waist and a flared skirt with a pretty trim of midnight lace around the hem. _

_Her skin looked almost translucent over her features. Her eyes were huge and stark within the whiteness of her face, while dark circles smudged the delicate skin underneath. She looked like a ghost. She felt like a ghost - insubstantial, not quite there. Her body was not her own. The face staring back at her from the mirrored glass was someone else too. Not her, not anymore, Lindsay Monroe was gone and this unrecognisable wraith had taken her place. _

_She was straddling the world between the living and the dead and she had no idea where she belonged. Everything in her life had been tipped upside down, shaken loose and then ripped apart at the seams. She would never be the same. Her friends were gone and there was nothing she could do to bring them back. Sometimes she wished she could have died with them..._

_Why hadn't she? Why had God or Fate deemed it fit to choose them and not her? Why…?_

"_Lindsay?" _

_She turned at the light tap on the door, waiting unmoving, unspeaking for the intruder to enter. It couldn't be time yet. She wasn't ready, she wasn't…_

_The door opened a crack and her sister's head __appeared around the frame. "Lindsay honey, it's nearly time."_

_Mel's face held that permanently wary expression that all her family had adopted around her since it had happened. It was as if they were waiting for her __to break down again, to explode with her grief, to shatter into a million pieces before their very eyes…_

_She turned back to her dresser and the __ever-present mirror. "I need…" She scrabbled around frantically on the dresser top, searching ineffectually for what she wanted. "I need…"_

"_You need what, sweetie?" Mel said, coming further in__to the room and laying calming hands on her slender shoulders._

"_The bracelets… I need them, I need them, Mel!" Her voice rose in pitch as hysteria took hold._

"_These you mean?" her sister said, reaching over her shoulder and calmly picking up the three colourful friendship bracelets that had somehow remained invisible to Lindsay's unseeing eyes. _

"_Yes!" _

_The relief was palpable __as she took them from her sibling's grasp. One by one she slid them onto her wrist – the red, white and sky-blue – that was Dana, ever the patriot; the sunshine yellow, orange and forest green – Sophie, the colours of nature, and finally Kelly – royal blue, deep purple and delicate mauve – the bold and the beautiful. Hers was an eclectic combination of all three – the red from Dana's, green from Sophie's and purple from Kelly's but individual in its own right too._

"_Are you sure you want to do this?" __Mel asked quietly, wrapping her arms around her sister's waist from behind and resting her chin on her shoulder. "You don't have to, you know."_

"_I do, I have to,__" Lindsay replied, her voice a little raspy from under use. _

_Mel sighed. "Yeah, I guess you do. You need to say goodbye. It's just __that practically the whole town will be attending and I don't think you realise what that means. We've kept you away from it all so far, but it's a media storm out there and you're about to walk right out into the middle of it…"_

"I handled it though," Lindsay told Danny. "The flashing cameras, the microphones shoved in my face, all of that. It was difficult, overwhelming, but I handled it. What I couldn't handle were their faces."

"Whose faces?" Danny asked gently.

His fingers were still entwined with hers, but there was no other physical contact between them. He wanted to draw her into his arms, hold her close on his lap, but he was afraid it would break the spell. She was finally talking to him, but it was taking its toll on her already. They were only going to be able to do this in short bursts, he realised. It took so much energy for her to even speak of what she'd been through. The strain was evident on her face and rife in her eyes. It was almost as if she was reliving it with every single word she spoke. She couldn't handle telling him the whole story in one sitting; it would simply be too much.

For better or for worse, they had started out on this difficult journey now though, and somehow had to find their way to the first available rest-stop.

"Lindsay?" he queried when she didn't immediately respond to his question. "Whose faces, babe?"

"The mothers," she told him with a visible shudder. "Well, all their faces actually, but especially the mothers."

There'd been clues to this before, Danny realised. With that Suicide Girl – what was her name? Carensa Sanders - that was it. What had Lindsay said to him when he'd questioned her reluctance to talk to the girl's bereaved mother?

'_I'm __no good with mothers, all right? Fathers? I can give bad news to all day long. I can't face mothers.'_

It all stemmed back to this. It had been at the forefront of her mind back then because of the impending trial and yet he hadn't known, nor had he questioned her over-the-top reaction to the case - not closely enough anyway. He'd been smarting at her abrupt u-turn with regard to their developing relationship, and hadn't known how to get past the inevitable awkwardness that had caused. He'd recognised that she wasn't herself, that she was struggling with something deeply personal, but the closeness of their connection had been eroded by her rejection and that had put a barrier between them where none used to exist.

She hadn't even told him why she was taking a leave of absence – the goodbye card she'd left for him had been charming with its coded message of tentative hope for the two of them, but it had been devoid of any real information about her enforced trip back home. She'd said a face-to-face goodbye to everyone else and yet had tellingly avoided him. He'd had to find out what was going on from his colleagues rather than direct from the source. Her reluctance to confide in him had left him wondering whether the feelings that he thought existed between them had ever truly been real.

Of course now he knew that it was because those feelings did exist that she'd held back. Clearly she'd had a bad experience with either Mark or Simon when she'd confided in them about the shooting and its traumatic aftermath. Equally obvious was the fact that she hadn't wanted to risk going through the same thing with him. When he'd flown to Bozeman during the court case, she'd given him a factual account of what had happened to her that night, but nothing beyond that, nothing of the emotional struggles she'd experienced then and since...

"Danny?"

Lindsay's tentative query broke through his reverie and he blinked, pulling himself back into the immediate present. He threw her an apologetic look. "Sorry, spaced out there for a second," he said. "I was just thinking…"

"About what?" she broke in.

He shrugged. "About the past, about us," he replied. "About how all of this is finally starting to explain some of the things that confused me."

"Like what?" she queried.

He gazed at her in mild reproach. "You didn't tell me, Linds - about the trial, about having to testify. You told Stella, the boss… but you didn't tell me. I had to ask Mac what was going on. He didn't say anything, but I think he was pretty surprised that I didn't already know. We may not have been together then, but you were still closer to me than you were to anyone else on the team - or so I thought anyway."

"I know," she said quietly. "I'm sorry. I never meant… It was… I'm sorry."

Danny reached out and took both her hands in his. "We're jumping ahead of ourselves again, but answer me one question, okay? No details, not yet, just a simple yes or no, all right?"

She nodded. "Okay, I'll try."

"When you told Mark and Simon about what happened to you…" He felt her tense and knew immediately he'd hit a raw nerve. "They reacted badly, right?"

He watched her eyes fill with salty moisture and her mouth tighten with suppressed emotion. Biting down on her bottom lip to prevent the sob that threatened to escape, she nodded miserably.

He didn't need to think, it was just instinctive. Shifting forward, he enveloped her in his arms and drew her close against his chest. At first, she held herself rigid in his embrace, but then she slowly relaxed against him, accepting the gesture for the honest comfort that it offered.

"Remind me to rearrange their faces if ever I meet them," he murmured to her and was gratified to hear the watery laugh that sentiment brought forth from her lips.

"That was them though, Lindsay," he said. "This is me and I'm not the same. I can't guarantee that I'll handle everything perfectly, but I will listen and I will accept. I _can_ promise you that."

"Accept everything?" she asked, her heart in her throat.

"It depends on what you mean by everything," he answered, cursing inwardly when he felt her automatic withdrawal. She tried to pull away from him, but he firmly cupped her chin in his hand and brought her gaze to his.

"There's a difference between accepting what you went through to accepting the consequences of it on our relationship," he explained. "You can't deny this has caused us both a lot of unnecessary heartache. I know there are other factors that contributed to that, but this is the main reason for the breakdown of our marriage even so. We could have worked things out a long time ago if you'd given us half a chance."

Lindsay ducked her gaze, guilt weighing heavy on her soul. "I know."

"But you denied us that option," Danny went on, relentlessly driving home the point. "Maybe not intentionally, but it's the reason we are where we are today."

"So I won't just accept okay?" he told her earnestly. "I want to understand why you reacted the way you did, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to tolerate a repeat. Knowing why will probably make me more understanding in the future, but I won't put up with you kicking me out every time one of your insecurities rears its ugly head."

"It wasn't like that…" she protested.

"Wasn't it?" Danny accused a tad more sharply than he intended.

He shook his head to clear the ugly resentment that had arisen within him at the unexpected turn their conversation had taken. He did not want to get into that right now. It wasn't the time for such recriminations. She was telling him of her troubles regardless of the cost to her emotional well-being, and it was down to him to listen and accept as he'd promised her he would.

"Look - I don't expect everything to become a wonderful bed of roses," he said. "But I do expect us to work together to build a stronger and healthier future. Neither of us is going to be happy if we don't, and if we're unhappy then Lucy is too. She's already been adversely affected by all of this."

"How do you mean?" Lindsay asked with concern.

Danny sighed. "She wanted us to go with them today. She was concerned that no-one would look after you and keep you from crying if she wasn't here. She made me promise that I would try to make you laugh while she was gone."

"Oh God!" Lindsay's hands rose to cover her mouth in reaction.

"I know we have to teach her about real life and stuff," Danny continued. "And it'd be naïve to think we can shield her from everything, but a four year old really shouldn't be worrying about that kind of thing."

"I know, I know, I'm sorry."

"You don't have to apologise," Danny said. "It's not your fault; I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that accepting the status quo isn't an option for us - not as a couple, or as parents. You get that, don't you?"

Lindsay nodded. "Yeah, yeah, I get that."

"So we're on the same page then?"

"Makes a change, huh?" Lindsay quipped with a weak attempt at humour.

Danny leaned his forehead against hers, his lips quirking into a glimmer of a smile. "It's a good start," he agreed. "But we've a long way to go yet."

"Anyway," he said, drawing back a little. "Back to what we were talking about before…"

Lindsay's expression immediately darkened.

"I know it's hard," Danny said quietly, "But I need to know."

"I know," she whispered. "I know. I…" She swallowed the lump in her throat and sucked in a deep breath before resuming her story.

"It was Sophie's funeral first," she told him. "They were all watching me, waiting for me to stumble… But I needed to keep it together. I had to keep it together. For them. I had to do it for them, Danny. I was so alone though, so isolated. I felt so apart from everyone else…"

She faltered, choking back a pain-filled sob. "They didn't want me there," she continued in a quavering voice. "I swear I could see it in their eyes. It was like I was trapped in a castle with its drawbridge destroyed to keep me locked in. Nobody could get across the moat because nobody _wanted _to get across. Everyone was content to leave me to rot in my own living hell because I didn't deserve to be alive anyway. I'd survived while others more worthy of life had died in my place."

The imagery was so stark in its clarity, so bleak in its outlook that Danny couldn't help being profoundly moved by it.

"Lindsay," he breathed. That simple utterance of her chosen name was all he could manage. He didn't know what else to say, all other words seemed inadequate.

"It got worse at every funeral – Sophie's, Dana's and finally Kelly's…" Lindsay closed her eyes as her voice failed her.

"Kelly was so talented, you see," she went on when she eventually found the strength to continue, "So beautiful. She was going to be a professional cellist – they said she was a virtuoso performer… and Kelly's Mom, she… she…"

Covering her face with her hands, Lindsay broke down then, her composure finally deserting her. It didn't matter though. Danny didn't have any trouble filling in the blanks. Kelly's Mom – lost in her overwhelming grief – had unintentionally confirmed everything that Lindsay had been feeling, and in doing so had crushed what was left of her already damaged self-esteem.

And it had never been taken back, he realised. He'd thought it slightly odd that she hadn't spoken to her friends' parents after the trial, but had assumed - at the time - that it was all too much for her to handle. Now he knew. Lindsay had accepted the responsibility for three mothers' grief onto herself and then internalised it, corrupting it beyond all recognition in the process. She didn't feel like she deserved to be loved because she was the cuckoo in the nest living someone else's life.

"What exactly did she say to you?" he asked. He didn't want to force her to relive it, but he couldn't fully understand if he didn't know.

"I can't, Danny…" Lindsay's voice was strained, but he refused to let her back away from it, not now, not when they'd come this far.

"Yes, you can," he told her implacably. He felt cruel, but the truth needed to be exposed.

Backed into a corner, Lindsay closed her eyes and called forth the painful memory from the dark recesses of her troubled mind…

_A thorn had __scratched her finger, but she barely noticed the sting. Blood was a symbol of life, but she was having trouble feeling her heart beating inside her chest right now. She knew one thing for certain though – she had to pay tribute. It was very important. This was the last and it was nearly time for the final good-bye. Slipping the bracelet from her wrist, she wound it around the stem and waited silently for her turn. When it was time, she moved forward, keeping her head bowed so as to not draw undue attention to herself. _

"_No!" _

_She jerked __her head up at the unexpected interruption. As she lifted her gaze from the ground, she was struck square between the eyes with a wave of anger and hostility. She swayed on her feet in its wake, but somehow managed to remain upright._

"_Susan…" Kelly's Dad placed a restraining hand on his wife's __forearm as she rose from her chair in protest. "Come on… Please, she's just a kid…"_

"_So?" Susan Broomfield's eyes flashed fire and brimstone. "I can't stand to even look at her, Marcus! What right does she have to be here when our Kelly is dead? Our baby had everything going for her, such a bright future, everyone said so. She was special, someone extraordinary! It should have been her, not our Kelly, not our beautiful, special, wonderful little girl…"_

_With a grief-stricken wail, __the bereaved mother collapsed into her husband's arms in a fresh storm of weeping. Marcus Broomfield threw an apologetic look at Elizabeth and Jack Monroe who had stepped forward to flank their daughter like two centurions. "I'm sorry, she's just… you know."_

_Elizabeth nodded. "I know," she said with some effort. She could feel Jack vibrating with tension beside her and knew what it had cost him not to leap to their innocent daughter's immediate defence. "Come on, honey." She curled a comforting arm around Lindsay's shoulders to lead her away._

"_But…" her youngest child objected, holding up her offering in mute appeal. _

_Torn between respecting another family's grief and her daughter's need for closure, Elizabeth hesitated. She cast a pleading look at Marcus, who eventually nodded, reasoning that his sobbing wife was too far gone to notice. Permission granted, Lindsay stepped to the grave-side and held out the flower over the lowered coffin. Unclenching her fingers, she let the bloom fall, and then numbly turned away and allowed her family to escort her back to their car._

"_It was only a flower," she said in a plaintive __tone once she was settled in the back-seat between her two brothers. "Kelly likes roses."_

"My Mom started crying then," Lindsay said matter-of-factly, her voice steadier now that this part of her story was told. "And my Dad had tears in his eyes too. I don't think I'd ever seen him cry before."

She reached up and traced the tracks of the tears that had run down his own cheeks with the tips of her fingers. "You're crying," she said, sounding slightly amazed by the fact.

"Jesus Lindsay!"

Grasping hold of her fingers, he pressed a fierce kiss to the centre of her palm. "You didn't deserve that. You do know that she didn't really mean it though, don't you? People can be selfish in their grief and her daughter had just been taken from her in the cruelest way possible. It's not an excuse, but surely your counsellor helped you to understand that?"

Lindsay nodded. "Yes, she did. I don't know whether I ever truly believed her though. I was just a kid; I had no concept of what being a parent really meant. I understand now, but back then..." She lifted her shoulders in a poignant shrug.

"Did she ever apologise?" Danny asked.

"Who? Kelly's Mom?" Lindsay shook her head. "No, but looking back on it, I think maybe she tried to. I remember she sent me Kelly's scrapbook. I couldn't face her though. I couldn't face any of them." She shuddered almost violently. "Not again; not ever again."

Danny nodded in understanding. Lindsay had become the queen of avoidance because she didn't want to take the risk of ever being made to feel that insignificant again.

"Is that honestly how you feel?" he enquired. "That you've cheated someone else out of the life that they deserved?"

"I…" Lindsay stopped and then sighed heavily. What was the point in denying it? "I did," she admitted. "For a long time I did. That's why I needed to do something significant with my life, something beyond the ordinary…"

"Something to prove you were worthy?" Danny quickly surmised.

"Yes," she replied.

"And being a CSI does that for you?" he asked.

Lindsay nodded. "Yes, yes, it does," she answered. "Every time I can offer a bereaved family some kind of closure, it's like I've given something back, paid off some portion of the debt."

"And when is that debt going to be paid in full, Linds?" he asked her.

"I don't know." Her lips twisted into a wry smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Sometime never probably."

"Lindsay…"

"It's okay, you know," she quickly intervened. "I don't really feel that way anymore - like I've stolen one of my friends' lives, I mean. I just struggle to accept that I'm truly worthy of the life that a twist of fate gifted to me instead of them."

"It's not going to do any good if I say you are worthy of it, is it?" Danny said in a resigned tone.

Lindsay sighed. "I wish it were that simple," she told him. "But it's difficult to believe when you've had the opposite re-enforced to you so many times in the past."

"But you trust me to tell you the truth, right?"

"I don't know," she answered.

"Well, thanks for the vote of confidence," Danny rejoined in a strained tone, not fully able to quash the hurt her way too honest response had caused him.

"Danny…" She reached for him, but he unconsciously shifted back, retreating from her touch.

"I know I've not made it easy," he said tersely, "Past mistakes and such like. But that was years ago, Lindsay. I thought that you'd at least have some faith in me by now, especially after what we've been through in the last couple of weeks. Hell, in the last year even."

"I have," she tried to reassure him. "It's just that there's always that little niggling voice in the back of my mind that keeps asking 'what if I'm wrong?' It's not so much about trusting you. It's more about trusting myself."

It was about more than that, Danny decided. It was about opening herself up to the possibility of getting hurt again. She'd shut herself off to protect her wounded heart, but that had only increased her sense of isolation, which in turn had made her even more vulnerable to any type of personal attack – real, imagined or otherwise. She loved, but she never allowed herself to be completely loved by anyone who had the potential to make her feel as if she wasn't good enough. It was too much of a risk to allow them that close.

Lucy and the rest of her family were safe bets, it seemed. He apparently didn't fall into the same category - partly as a result of his own actions, but equally because he was living in the shadow of the two men who had come before him. Her comment that it was 'difficult to believe when you've had the opposite re-enforced to you so many times in the past' suggested that her relationships with the ubiquitous Mark and Simon had only served to compound her already low self-esteem. She'd admitted as much to him earlier in actual fact.

But that was a conversation for another day, he reluctantly concluded. "I guess we're going to have to work harder on building up that trust then," he said, reaching over and lightly squeezing her fingers to show her that there were no hard feelings on his part.

"But I think maybe that's about enough for today," he said as he sat back. "You need a break."

"I'm okay, Danny," Lindsay told him.

"You still need a break," he insisted. "One step at a time, that's what we agreed. We've made a good start, but Rome wasn't built in a day." He rose purposefully from the sofa. "Now I don't know about you, but I'm way past ready for my lunch. How does a chicken club sandwich sound?"

"I'll probably just have a salad or something," Lindsay absently replied.

"No, you won't," Danny said firmly as they went through into the large family kitchen. "You'll eat whatever I make you."

"But…"

"What did you have for breakfast?" he asked, cutting off her protest.

"Just a bowl of fruit," Lindsay admitted shamefacedly. "I couldn't eat anything else," she said by way of explanation. "I was so nervous about… well, you know; I would have thrown up if I had."

Danny sighed, still not quite believing that she'd gone to the diner alone when he would have been there to support her if only she'd asked.

"You don't have to be my nursemaid, you know," she said defensively, misreading the sentiment behind his somewhat despondent sigh.

"Maybe not, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stand back and watch you waste away either," he retorted hotly.

Opening the refrigerator door, he began to gather what he needed, setting the items down on the counter with a little more force than was strictly necessary. God, she frustrated the hell out of him sometimes. She was such a mass of contradictions. One minute she was leaning on him like he was her only remaining life-raft, the next she was insistent on treading water without assistance until she reached the point of exhaustion.

"Sit," he said peremptorily, pointing at the table.

Lindsay obeyed because even though her pride was stung at being treated like an errant child, she knew that he only had her best interests at heart. Moreover - even though she was loath to admit it - she knew she needed his help to overcome the side-effects of her depression. Eating had always been a problem for her at the dark times in her life. Some people comfort ate, she was the opposite. It wasn't that she deliberately starved herself, eating just became a chore that she felt no inclination to complete.

Their shared meal passed uneventfully however. Lindsay astounded herself by polishing off every last bite of the sandwich that Danny had prepared for her. Afterwards, they went for a long, rambling walk in the rugged countryside surrounding her parents' property, and then settled down in front of the TV for a DVD marathon, ordering in a fully-loaded pizza around seven pm. She only managed to eat a couple of slices, but it didn't stick in the back of her throat as she thought it might.

Throughout all of this, Danny had deliberately kept the conversation light and cheery and Lindsay was infinitely grateful to him for that. It was enough to just be with him, to relax in his company and re-establish the bonds of their lost friendship. The more psychologically taxing matters would have to be revisited, but, for a few precious hours, they enjoyed a much-needed respite from those difficult emotions.

The only slightly uncomfortable moment came when it was time for them to bid each other good night.

"Stay!" Lindsay blurted when Danny turned for the door.

He hesitated and she blushed in confusion. "I mean, I don't want to be in the house on my own tonight. Not after…" She stopped, not knowing how to voice her fears. "You could stay in the guest room," she hurried on. "I'm in my old room and Lucy's in the nursery."

Danny wasn't sure he particularly wanted to sleep in the room that they used to share when they visited her parents as man and wife, but he understood her reluctance to be alone in the house nevertheless. She'd had a rough day, so if him being down the hall would make it easier for her to sleep then he wasn't going to refuse.

"I'll go and get my things," he told her and she relaxed, her face splitting into a grateful smile.

"Thanks," she said softly.

"No problem," he returned with an awkward nod.

An hour later, Lindsay was sitting in front of her dresser, absentmindedly pulling a brush through the silky strands of her freshly-washed hair. Today had been an emotional rollercoaster ride of mammoth proportions and she was dreading the effect that would have on her already erratic sleep patterns. One half of her felt at peace for finally having told Danny some of her secret heartache, while the other half was still a mass of confusion and chronic self-doubt.

She yawned, bone-tired weariness making her limbs ache. Her eyes felt heavy and yet she was afraid to sleep. The encroaching darkness always invited in the horror in spite of her valiant attempts to block it out.

With a sigh, she reached into the top drawer of her dresser, withdrew a small, lockable jewellery box and opened it with its tiny key. Inside was a single, slightly faded friendship band – her own, the only one left. They'd each made four, gave away three, and kept the one remaining for themselves so that they all wore the same quartet. It was meant as a symbol of their unbreakable bond, a promise to be friends forever…

Sliding the coloured band onto her wrist, Lindsay turned for the bed and climbed under the covers. Closing her eyes, she burrowed deep, cocooning herself in the worn patchwork comforter. Perhaps wearing the bracelet would be enough to keep the nightmares at bay for one night, she thought.

Perhaps, if she was lucky…

**OOOOOO**

_**Several hours later…**_

Some kind of sixth sense alerted him. He lay in the still darkness for a moment, trying to get his bearings before the faint sounds of Lindsay's unconscious distress reached his ears.

He knew what those whimpers meant, of course. He'd experienced her nightmares enough times in the past to recognise them for what they were. Soon she'd awaken, roused abruptly out of her dreams by the painful echoes of her past. She'd be lost, confused, her mind still trapped in the middle of her teenage trauma until her body became aware of its current location.

Knowing that his presence would help speed up that process, he was up, out of bed and striding down the hallway before he even knew what he was doing. The door to her bedroom was slightly ajar and he could see a faint light coming from within. Pushing the door fully open, he realised that she'd left Lucy's nightlight burning on the nightstand, perhaps in a vain attempt to stave off the night terrors.

Clearly it hadn't worked. The bedclothes lay in an untidy heap on the panelled floor by the bed where her thrashing body had inadvertently discarded them in the throes of its distress. Tears were streaming down her cheeks even in her slumbering state, and unintelligible, pain-filled sobs tumbled from her lips.

He knew that the experts advised not to wake someone from a nightmare, but he'd never been able to stand by and leave her in such a pitiful state. Perching on the edge of the mattress beside her, he reached over and stroked his fingers through her sweat-dampened hair as he quietly but urgently called her name.

"Lindsay? Lindsay, come on, babe. Wake up, sweetheart, wake up."

It took a couple of minutes, but eventually she wrenched herself from her disturbed sleep with a plaintive moan of distress. "Oh God! Oh no, no, please no!"

She bolted upright, her body shuddering in her horror. Her breath was coming in agonised gasps and her sobs were harsh and grief-stricken. She looked confusedly around the room, her eyes wide and bewildered, and dark with terror.

When she couldn't seem to break free of the shackles of her nightmare, Danny realised that her girlhood bedroom was perhaps not the best place for her. It anchored her in the past when it was the future she needed to recognise and grab hold of. Without hesitation, he swept her up into his arms and carried her down the hallway to the guest bedroom. Pushing aside the comforter, he lay her gently down on the mattress, all the while speaking to her in a low, comforting tone to try to bring her out of her dazed shock.

"Ssh, ssh, it's okay," he murmured as he brushed her hair out of her eyes and lightly caressed the side of her face in an attempt to focus her attention on him rather than inward into her lingering nightmare.

He leaned over and kissed her forehead, thumbed away the beaded moisture on her tear-stained cheeks before his mouth eventually settled over hers in a kiss that was as light and as delicate as butterfly wings.

That seemed to do the trick. Like Sleeping Beauty awakening from her poisoned sleep, the glazed look in her eyes slid away at the touch of his lips against hers.

"Danny?" Her voice was low and throaty, but her eyes were now focused on his.

"Yeah, I'm here," he gently assured her. "You had a nightmare, but you're okay, you're okay."

He leant down to kiss her again and her hands involuntarily rose to frame his stubble-roughened face as he did so. "I'm here," he repeated as his mouth found hers for a third time.

He couldn't seem to stop kissing her and their embrace swiftly intensified without either of them being fully aware of it. As Danny threaded his fingers through her hair and took their kiss deeper still, Lindsay opened her mouth to his probing tongue and responded in kind. Arching her body into his with a soft, yielding moan, she clutched at his back to draw him down on top of her. As his weight settled over hers, they broke apart, their combined breathing sounding choppy and uneven in the eerie stillness of the darkened bedroom.

Danny looked down at Lindsay lying beneath him on the bed, her hair scattered like a halo on the pillow and her skin taking on the silvery sheen of the moonlight streaming in through a gap in the drapes. Fragile and fairy-like in her sheer nightgown, she looked positively ethereal. Her large doe eyes were wide and startled, the expression in them overflowing with the depth of her churning emotions.

Part of him recognised the need to pull back, to avoid proceeding any further down a road that they weren't yet ready to travel, but he couldn't have torn his gaze away from those mesmerising orbs if someone had paid him a million dollars to do it. When she curled her hand around the nape of his neck to pull his face back down to hers for yet another heartfelt kiss, all his resistance flew out the window.

Surrendering to the inevitable, he quietly slipped over the edge into the abyss and allowed himself to drown in the warm familiarity of her tender embrace…

_**To be continued…**_

_**A/N2:**__ Phew! I made it through to the end. This chapter was a difficult one - I'm still not sure I'm entirely happy with it, but it's the best it's going to get. I struggled endlessly with the first scene. I did not know how to put into words what Lindsay felt at her friends' funerals. I thought about telling it all in flashback, but that would have been a cop-out. It was always going to begin and end that way, but the middle was something that I felt that Lindsay had to say directly to Danny and that you, as the readers, had to hear from her lips too. _

_That's why their conversation goes off on a bit of tangent halfway through. It wasn't actually meant to - not at this point in the story anyway - but it helped me work through the block and arrive at the pivotal moment of the scene. The imprisoned-in-a-castle metaphor finally hit me just as I was about ready to scream with frustration. I think it works, I hope so anyway._

_Till __next time then… CharmedBec x_


	14. Acceptance

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hey! New update for you. Long chapter this, but I didn't think you'd mind – although you might think differently when you see how I've ended it! LOL!

Anyway, with no further ado, on with the show…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part **__**14 – Acceptance**_

The following morning, Lindsay was awoken by the warmth of the sunbeam that fell across her face as the peachy dawn melted into the first full light of day.

Her eyelids fluttered open and she instinctively reached out for Danny's familiar form in the bed beside her. It was a habit that she hadn't been able to break, despite the sixteen months they'd been apart. It always came as a shock to find herself unaccompanied in her bed - doubly so this morning however, because for the first time in a very long time, she hadn't slept alone.

Sitting up, she gathered the bedclothes about her and rested her chin on her drawn-up knees as vivid memories of the previous night came flooding back in a series of jumbled images and scattered sensations. Their lovemaking had been slow and gentle in nature rather than overtly passionate, but it was what she had needed after the trauma of her nightmare. It was what they both had needed, she thought.

Okay so Danny had left her to wake alone this morning, but that didn't have to mean anything, did it? She'd sensed no obvious unwillingness in him last night. He'd made love to her with open tenderness, hesitating only briefly before giving himself over to her. Afterwards, she'd curled her sated limbs around his and slept in peace, comforted by the solid warmth of his presence by her side.

A few hours ago, this bed had been her safe haven - now it felt cold and uninviting and a sliver of apprehension coiled in her belly as a result. Forcing her stagnant body to move, she tossed the bed-covers aside, rose to her feet and padded barefoot down the hallway to her room. After finding a robe and some slippers to wear, she descended the staircase to the ground floor and went through into the kitchen.

Danny was nowhere to be seen, but a faint breeze tugged at the hem of her cotton robe, drawing her attention to the back door which had been left slightly ajar. She moved towards it and stepped outside onto the wide, wooden decking that circled almost the entire house. Shivering a little at the slight chill in the air, she pulled her robe closer about her while her roaming eyes sought out her missing bedfellow.

Danny was sitting on the back stoop, gazing out over the dewy expanse of grass with his elbows balanced on his knees and his chin resting in his cupped hands. Lindsay could tell from the rather tense set of his shoulders that something wasn't quite right, but she pushed that sense of foreboding aside and quietly approached him from behind.

"Hey!" she said lightly as she lowered herself onto the step beside him. She ran a gentle hand down the length of his spine and felt him flinch away from her touch. "What's wrong?" she asked tremulously.

Danny shot her an uncomfortable sidelong glance, and then quickly looked away from her questioning gaze. "Last night…" he began, and then broke off, shaking his head, unclear on how to proceed without making the situation worse than it already was.

Hunching his shoulders, he pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and let out a resigned sigh. "Last night was a mistake," he told her in a flat tone. "I shouldn't have… We shouldn't have…"

Everything within Lindsay wanted to scuttle back behind the thick wall of self-protection that she'd built up around her heart, but she knew that she couldn't do that anymore, not if she wanted to save her marriage. Gathering up her courage, she forced herself to ask "Why?" instead.

"Because we…" Danny grappled for the right words to explain his meaning. "Look, it's not like I didn't want to, Linds. It's just that …"

He paused before finally finding his inspiration. "Remember what you said to me in the hospital after the fire when I said I was going to stay with you?" he asked her, "The thing that made me so mad at you?"

Lindsay felt an unexpected spark of anger ignite inside of her at his words. "Are you telling me you slept with me because you felt _sorry_ for me?" she demanded.

"No!" Danny shook his head adamantly, and then sighed. "Well, yes - on some level I guess I am. You were right, you know. I do try to smooth over difficult situations with actions rather than words. It's an unfortunate habit of mine, but one I need to break, especially when it comes to the two of us."

"What exactly are you trying to say, Danny?" Lindsay said, no longer able to keep the hurt and bewilderment out of her voice, "Because I'm _really_ not getting it right now."

Danny reached over and took hold of her hand before using the fingertips of his free hand to bring her gaze to his. "I'm not explaining this very well, am I?" he remarked ruefully.

"Oh – you think?" she responded, the sarcastic lilt in her voice softened only slightly by the quizzical expression in her eyes.

"Look, it's not like last night didn't mean anything," he assured her. "Of course it did. It's just that I don't think we should be complicating our situation with sex right now. It can cloud your judgement and we need to keep clear heads. We have to face up to and deal with the real issues between us, not let ourselves get side-tracked by more… well, pleasurable pursuits."

Lindsay's agitation calmed at that, to be replaced by a hint of wry amusement, a feeling that she couldn't quite keep from showing in her expressive eyes.

Danny grinned at her a little self-consciously, correctly reading the playful jest in her knowing gaze. "I'm not _that_ much of a horn-dog," he protested indignantly. "I can do without for a few weeks. Hell, a few months if necessary."

"Did I suggest any different?" she asked, her eyes wide and innocent.

"You didn't have to," he told her sourly, and she laughed before her mood sobered once more.

"Does…"

She stopped, drew in a deep breath and then plunged on before her courage deserted her. "Does this mean that you want to give our marriage another go?" she asked meaningfully. "You'll call your lawyer and tell him to put the divorce on hold?"

Danny held her gaze for a long, protracted moment before eventually nodding his assent. "Yeah, I guess it does," he responded with a slight smile.

"Oh!"

Lindsay could not prevent the tears that sprang into her eyes at that. She turned her face into his shoulder, trying to contain the sudden rush of uncontrollable emotion.

"Linds, hey, come on," Danny soothed, cupping the back of her head in his palm and pressing a light kiss into her hair.

"I was so afraid you wouldn't want to," she told him, her voice muffled by the material of the t-shirt he wore. "I've given you enough reason to walk away."

Danny sighed. "Maybe you have, but it's not as simple as that. Last night wasn't really about the sex, you know."

Sniffling a little, Lindsay nodded, understanding what he was trying to say even if he wasn't doing the best job of it. He'd made love to her in the truest sense. It hadn't been about physical satisfaction, it had been about the two of them connecting on the deepest level possible. The fact that she was still able to move him in that way gave her genuine hope for their future.

As Lindsay struggled to get her wayward emotions back under control, Danny nuzzled his face into her hair and inhaled the fragrant smell of the herbal shampoo that she used. Last night he'd been distinctly uneasy when what had started out as simple comfort on his part had turned into something more. He'd not held back in spite of that however. Blanketed by the hazy shadows of the night, it had felt like coming home after a long journey and he'd surrendered to it wholeheartedly.

Nevertheless, when he'd woken up just before dawn to find Lindsay nestled intimately against his side, it had been a different matter entirely. The close physical contact had felt awkward and out of place. Rachel had never been that much of a cuddler – if she'd gone to sleep that way she usually rolled away from him before morning. It had been a bit of a jolt to wake up with Lindsay in his arms therefore.

Unlike his former girlfriend, his wife had always needed some level of physical contact during the night. If she'd not slept within his embrace, he'd often woken to discover a warm palm resting against his back, an arm flung across his middle or gentle fingers curled around his waist or hip. With newly discovered insight, he realised that it was a way for Lindsay to stay anchored in the present. Or maybe it was simply a desire to reassure herself that she was not alone in the world.

Whatever the reason, he'd not slept beside his wife for over a year now and to wake up to find her body intimately wrapped around his had felt strange. It gave an illusion of togetherness that no longer really existed between them, and all he could think of was that he'd made a huge mistake in allowing things to go as far as they had. Lindsay had been vulnerable in her distress and he'd taken advantage of that. He was the one with the power and he'd abused it.

That underlying sense of wrongness had propelled him out of bed, into the shower and then downstairs into the fresh mountain air, where he'd spent the next hour or more agonising over how to tell Lindsay that they'd made a mistake without hurting her anymore than was strictly necessary.

After the discussion they'd just had though, he felt considerably better about things. The inner tension he'd woken up with that morning was finally beginning to dissipate. Lindsay had taken his need to step back surprisingly well, and he decided that perhaps it hadn't been such a bad thing for them to have reconnected on a physical level after all. At least it had alleviated some of his lingering concerns about the direction in which they were headed.

He knew that he cared for Lindsay deeply, still loved her in fact, but there was a difference between that and that extra spark that transformed a close, platonic friendship into a loving and healthy marriage. After last night, any doubts that he'd secretly harboured about his continuing feelings for her had been swept away. In spite of his recent relationship with another woman, the chemistry was still there - as strong and as fresh as ever.

The weird thing was Rachel was precisely the kind of woman he'd always envisaged himself being married to, not Lindsay. Although he had genuinely cared for her, there had always been something missing however. She'd filled the void in his life left by his and Lindsay's split, but it hadn't been enough to sustain them in the long-term. She was a rebound relationship, pure and simple - except it had taken him until now to properly recognise that fact.

When all was said and done, it was a quirky country girl from Montana who - after a couple of false starts – had captured his heart like no-one else could. And she held it still - he no longer had any qualms about that. Sliding a finger under her chin, he lifted her face to his and cemented that fact with a soft, gentle kiss to her upturned lips.

"We should go for a ride," he suggested when they drew apart. He jerked his thumb at the clear, blue sky above. "It looks like the weather is going to hold out."

Lindsay blinked, a little nonplussed at the unexpected change in mood and subject. "What now?" she asked confusedly. "Today, you mean?"

Danny nodded. "Yeah, I have to leave the day after tomorrow and I should take the opportunity while I'm here, don't you think? Your parents aren't going to be back with Lucy until early evening, right?"

Lindsay shook her head. "No, but don't you want to talk? Continue the conversation we started yesterday?"

Danny looked at her contemplatively for a moment. "Yes," he said slowly, "But I think we should pace ourselves with that. It's obviously difficult for you emotionally and I don't want to push things too far, too fast. This isn't only about healing our marriage, Lindsay. It's about getting you well again too. We can't just pretend that your depression doesn't exist."

"It doesn't control my whole life," Lindsay objected defensively.

"I'm not suggesting it does," he returned calmly, "But it would be a mistake to ignore it even so. It's an illness you've suffered from several times in the past from what your Mom told me the other day."

"My Mom has a big mouth," was Lindsay's somewhat caustic response.

"Your Mom told me what you should have told me yourself years ago," Danny countered reproachfully.

"What? So you could judge me?" She shot back. "No thanks. Been there, done that."

Danny shook his head. "Nobody's judging you, Lindsay," he assured her. "Given what you went through, I think you're remarkably together if you want to know the truth. Yes, you have your scars, but that's perfectly understandable under the circumstances. What happened could so easily have completely broken you and yet here you are. Being prone to the occasional bout of depression does not make you any less of a person. Do you honestly think that it does?"

"I don't know!" Lindsay said, sounding utterly bewildered. She didn't know how to respond to his positive affirmation; it wasn't how she felt inside. "Sometimes I feel like I'm half a person, not completely whole, you know?"

"And you think that other people judge you in the same light?" Danny asked.

Her reaction validated his earlier assumption that she could only handle so much at a time. She was visibly trembling now and her face was a mask of confusion and self-doubt. He hadn't intended for their conversation to travel down this path, but he had to see it through to the next fork in the road now that it had.

"Lindsay?" he prompted quietly when she didn't answer him.

"You don't understand…" she said faintly.

"No, I don't," he concurred. "So tell me."

"I…" She looked away from him, avoiding his gaze. "I know they see me like that."

"How do you know?"

"I just do, okay?" she answered. "It doesn't have to be said, you can see it in their eyes whenever they look at you."

He hated how she grouped everyone – including him – into that ubiquitous 'they.' It was kind of insulting actually. All right so he hadn't been the best boyfriend in the world, but he had never judged her. And he'd been a good husband to her too. Not perfect, he would never say that, but he didn't believe he'd failed in that respect. He'd loved her and he'd let it show. Perhaps she needed some reminding.

"Well know one thing," he said, reaching out to cup her face in his hands. "Look at me!" he insisted when she instinctively lowered her lashes to avoid the too intimate eye-contact.

He waited until she'd reluctantly returned her gaze to his. "I'm not judging you," he swore. "And I never will. Didn't I tell you that yesterday?" Her eyes were round and liquid, but he didn't back down. "You wanna know what I see when I look at you?" he asked.

He felt her shy away, but he held his ground because what he had to say was too important to let go. "I see a beautiful, brave woman who has been to hell and back, but still somehow manages to find a way to smile. She has her idiosyncrasies, sure, but that's what makes her who she is. She can be difficult to love sometimes, but the rewards of loving her more than make up for that. She's… she's my Montana, that's who she is."

"Danny…" It was too much. She didn't want to believe, but he held her gaze steady, looked right into the depths of her soul and she couldn't hide from it.

"Know it," Danny repeated, hammering the point home. There was so much more to say, but now wasn't the right time. He just needed her to believe in his words. She had to accept it as truth, however unwillingly.

"You have bad taste," she told him then, and he smiled. It was good enough. She believed, even if she didn't really understand why he would feel that way when - in her own mind - she wasn't worth that kind of reverence.

"Yeah, well, that makes two of us," he said, coaxing a reluctant smile out of her. He got to his feet and held out his hand. "Come on; let's get some breakfast and then saddle up those horses."

Lindsay allowed him to pull her to her feet. "I think we can probably rustle up a picnic lunch too," she said as they turned for the kitchen door. "My Mom usually has enough food in to feed the five thousand…"

She broke off at the sound of an approaching car. Reversing their direction, they moved around to the front of the house via the circular deck to see who it was.

"Oh no! Mel!" Lindsay said in dismay as she recognised her sister's vehicle. She looked at Danny in consternation. "Somebody must have told her about yesterday."

"I hate small towns!" she went on irritably. "Everybody knows everyone else's business. Give me the big city any day. You can be anonymous there. It's not even nine AM, for god's sake!"

She sighed. "I look like I've been crying, don't I?"

Danny studied her face. Her eyes were a little red, but she didn't look as emotionally ravaged as she had done yesterday after she'd finished telling him about her friends' funerals. His firm commitment to working towards a reconciliation, her acceptance that he didn't view her as the damaged-beyond-repair victim that she feared he did, not to mention a little cathartic sex, had all done wonders for her state of mind. She looked considerably more rested than she had in a while, plus the light of hope had re-entered her eyes.

"You look fine," he assured her. "Just stay calm, okay?" He could feel her rising tension already.

As Mel got out the car and slammed the door shut with vigour, Lindsay steeled herself for the inevitable confrontation. She knew her sister cared, but she wanted time alone with Danny right now. They'd made so much positive progress in the last twenty-four hours; she could scarcely believe they'd been on the brink of a divorce a few weeks ago. She knew they still had a long road ahead of them, but it didn't feel as if her one shot at happiness was slipping through her fingers anymore. She'd gotten a firm grip now, and she was intending to hold on tight and never let go. An untimely visit from her over-protective sister was the last thing she needed.

"Are you okay?" Mel asked as she took the front steps two at a time. "I can't believe you didn't call me," she reproved before Lindsay had a chance to respond. "I had to hear what happened from Carli Stimson of all people!"

Lindsay suppressed an amused grin at that. Her sister and Carli - with an 'i' - had been bitter rivals in High School, one the stereotypical blonde, perky head of the cheerleading squad, the other in the enviable position of being both smart _and_ popular. Lindsay supposed it must have riled Mel to be informed of her younger sister's escapade by her teenage nemesis.

"Great," she remarked acidly. "So I'm the talk of the town, huh?" Carli worked at the hair and beauty salon on Main Street, the central hub for most of the town's gossip.

"That's hardly the issue, Lindsay!" her sister admonished.

Lindsay sighed in exasperation. "I'm fine, Mel," she said wearily. "I know what I did was kind of rash, but I survived it. There was no need for you to come rushing over here like this."

Mel ignored that. "I suppose this was your harebrained idea?" she demanded of Danny.

"It was _my_ decision, Mel," Lindsay quickly rebutted. "It was pretty awful, but I'm glad I faced it even so."

"You look tired," Mel noted then, her doctor's eyes assessing her sister's condition in a brief glance. "How much sleep did you get last night?"

Caught on the hop, Lindsay felt her cheeks grow hot as she blushed up a firestorm.

"Jesus!" Mel exclaimed. "_Please_ tell me you weren't that stupid."

Lindsay stiffened at that. All right so that was it, enough was enough. "Mel?" she said harshly. "Just do me a favour and back off, okay? I know that you love me; I _know _that you care, but I'm not a child anymore. I'm a thirty-one year old grown woman, and, quite frankly, my marriage is none of your goddamn business. I don't interfere in yours and Paul's relationship, do I?"

"That's different."

"How?"

"You…" Mel faltered for a second before quickly rediscovering her mettle. "You need taking care of, Lindsay."

Lindsay threw her hands up in despair. "No, Mel, I don't," she insisted. "Yes, a terrible thing happened to me. Yes, I do sometimes suffer from depression because of it. But I'm an adult now and I can deal with that. I don't need watching over every single second of every single day."

"And what happens when he walks out again, Lindsay? What then, huh?"

"All right," Danny said, stepping in before the situation got utterly out of hand. "I think we're getting away from the point here. She's asking you for some space, Mel. Maybe you should try and respect that."

"What? Like _you_ did a year ago, you mean?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" he demanded.

"Exactly what it sounds like. You couldn't handle it when the going got tough, could you?"

Danny refused to get angry, even though his temper was beginning to rise. He could understand where Mel was coming from, you see. Sixteen years ago, she'd watched her little sister go through hell and high water and naturally wanted to do everything in her power to prevent that from happening again. Lindsay had to learn to stand on her own two feet sometime however. He could be there for her as her husband and friend, but he couldn't shield her from everything. No-one could. He suspected that deep down Mel knew that, but that it was something that she was finding difficult to accept all the same.

"We went through a rough time," he admitted, keeping his voice steady and matter-of-fact. "It happens. Are you saying that yours and Paul's marriage has always been a perfect garden of sweet-smelling roses?"

"No, of course not, but at least we've never filed for divorce!"

"I didn't file for divorce," Danny rejoined quietly.

"Oh right, so that makes it all Lindsay's fault, does it? Because she's the one who ultimately pulled the plug?"

"No," Danny answered, responding as calmly as he could to the acerbic accusation levelled at him. "I'm not saying that, but if you're trying to make out that I abandoned her when she needed me the most, then I'm sorry but you're way out of line. It wasn't like that and I resent the implication that it was."

"He's right, Mel," Lindsay said, jumping in to add weight to her husband's standpoint. "That wasn't how it was. I know I led you to believe otherwise, but I thought I explained all of that a week ago."

"Fine," Mel said shortly. "Have it your way. Just don't come crying to me when he breaks your heart again, all right?"

Turning abruptly on her heel, she stomped down the steps towards her car, while Lindsay resisted the urge to scream. Mel could be so stubborn at times, but she would never have survived her teenage years without her. While her older brothers had gotten angry and resentful on her behalf, and her parents had often stifled her with their overwhelming concern, Mel had been the calm voice of reason throughout all of her dark times. She'd allowed her to breathe, to find her own way in life, but had always been there in the background, ready to lend a helping hand should she ever stumble or fall.

It was only as Lindsay had moved into adulthood that things had begun to change between them. In college, she'd re-discovered the person she was in the wake of everything that had happened to her, and had no longer needed her sister's support in quite the same way as before. She was finally ready to make her own decisions in life, as well as live with the consequences of her mistakes, but Mel had gotten so used to stepping in before she took a wrong turn that she didn't know how to respond to that. The more Lindsay had tried to assert her independence, the more her sister had tightened her grip. They were still close, but an indefinable something had been lost along the way, something that Lindsay desperately wanted for them to regain.

Knowing that she couldn't let her sister leave on such a sour note therefore, she started after her, but was halted in her tracks when Danny caught hold of her arm as she passed by. "I'll talk to her," he said.

"But…"

"Her main issue is with me," he pointed out. "She's afraid I'll hurt you again, and she's not going to listen to reason until she's reassured herself that I'm not the cad that she thinks I am."

Lindsay knew he was right, but she didn't think that's all there was to it. It was the loss of control that her sister found most difficult to take. Of course, there would be no chance of resolving any of that until the situation with Danny was sorted. "Go," she told him with a nod.

Released by her acquiescence, Danny turned and took the porch steps at a flying leap, running to catch up his fleeing sister-in-law.

"Mel, come on… wait up," he called out as he sprinted across the grass.

At first she pointedly ignored him, but a few metres from her car; she finally relented and whirled around to confront him. "I thought you were different!" she stormed, her eyes flashing.

"What? From first love Mark and insensitive Simon, you mean?" he threw back.

Mel recoiled at that, her angry tirade punctured by his uncanny insight into the true reason behind her antagonism towards him. "She's told you about them?" she asked in an incredulous tone.

He shook his head. "No, not properly, not yet," he replied. "But she will. In time."

"And you're wrong," he went on. "I may not know the full story yet, but I _am_ different, Mel. I'm still here, aren't I? Even knowing what I know, not to mention living with the consequences of it on our marriage, I'm still here."

"You hurt her," his sister-in-law accused, but her tone had softened as her indignant rage started to run out of steam.

He acknowledged that with an incline of his head. "True," he said, "But it cuts both ways, Mel," he added with feeling. "It cuts both ways."

Mel let out a grudging sigh. "I want to hate you," she said peevishly. "It would be so much easier if I could just hate you."

Danny shot her a wolfish grin. "I know," he said, "But it wouldn't be half as much fun now, would it?"

That earned him a reluctant smile. "Jerk," she accused good-naturedly.

"Look – I don't know for certain whether Lindsay and I can work this out," Danny told her seriously. "But I do know that I'm definitely going to be sticking around to try. If there comes a time when we do decide to go our separate ways, then it'll be a considered and mutual decision, I promise you that. Personally though? I'm hoping for a much brighter outcome."

Mel looked beyond him to where Lindsay waited on the porch. "She didn't deserve any of it," she asserted, her eyes filling with moisture as past hurts rushed to the surface.

Danny nodded solemnly. "I know," he agreed, "But it happened and it can't be taken back. I get why you'd do anything to prevent her from getting hurt again, but you can't wrap her up in cotton wool. She needs to make her own decisions, and she needs you to step back enough to let her. If you're not ready to trust me to take care of her, then at least trust in her ability to take care of herself."

"What? When she's had such great judgement in the past?" Mel said derisively, although the smile in her eyes belied the bite in her words.

"Were Mark and Simon really such villians?" he asked her.

Mel sighed. "Mark? No, not so much, he was just… young and immature, I guess. Simon?" Her expression hardened. "Simon has a lot more to answer for… _but_ I'll let Lindsay tell you about that. I don't want to interfere."

Danny grinned. "Yes, you do."

Mel shrugged a little ruefully. "Maybe, but as much as it pains me to admit it, I have to step back. I don't want to lose her."

"I don't think that'll ever happen," Danny assured her.

"Maybe not," she accepted, "But if I keep pushing it, we won't be as close, will we?"

"Besides, she's right," she continued. "Your marriage is your concern, not mine, and it's down to the two of you to make it work." She fixed steely eyes on his face. "So don't you let her down, okay?"

"And tell her I love her," she instructed as she turned for her car.

"Will do," Danny said, holding the door open as she climbed into the driver's seat. "You don't have to leave, you know."

Mel chuckled as she reached out for the door handle. "Yeah, I do," she said. "I know my sister and she wants me gone. _You're _the only one she wants to be with right now. So go do what you do, city boy," she finished with a dismissive wave of her hand.

Danny stepped back as she pulled the door shut, and then jogged back towards the house after she'd turned her car around and headed back down the gravelled driveway.

"She's calmed down, right?" Lindsay enquired anxiously when he rejoined her on the porch.

"I think we reached an understanding," Danny replied.

"I hate being at odds with her," Lindsay told him.

"She told me to tell you that she loved you before she left," Danny said as they headed back into the house. "So I think you're forgiven."

"I can't believe I actually stood up to her," Lindsay said then. "I don't think I've ever openly told her to back off before."

"Why not?" Danny asked curiously.

Lindsay laughed. "You've met my sister, right? She's… umm… very… err…"

"Formidable?" Danny suggested, his eyebrows lifting.

"That's one word for it, I guess," Lindsay concurred with a smile. "There are plenty others…. But it's not that, not really. It's just… my family are everything to me, Danny. I'd have gone crazy without them. I owe them so much."

"That shouldn't make you feel beholden to them, Linds," Danny told her. "I doubt any of them would want that, Mel included."

"No, I know," Lindsay said with a sigh. "I guess me and Mel have a few things to work out, huh?"

"You'll be fine," Danny assured her. "She may not like it very much, but she gets why you need your space."

"I'm sorry about the things she said to you," she told him. "I kind of vented more to Mel than anyone when we split so…" She lifted her shoulders in an apologetic shrug.

Danny shook his head. "You were angry, hurt, I get that, and she's your sister – who else were you going to confide in?"

"Talking to you might have been a start," Lindsay remarked contritely.

Reaching out with his right arm, Danny hooked it around her waist and pulled her in close, resting his forehead against hers as she lifted her arms to loop them around his neck.

"Better late than never, babe," he murmured as their lips met in a sweet, gentle kiss. "Better late than never…"

**OOOOOO**

_**Several hours later…**_

With a softly-spoken "Whoa," Lindsay reined in her young mare, Star, at the top of the steep trail with practised ease.

"You okay?" she called over her shoulder to Danny, who was still carefully picking his way over the uneven ground some fifty metres behind her.

"Yep!" he called out in response, his voice taut with concentration.

"What? You think I couldn't handle it?" he said triumphantly when he eventually reached her side a minute or so later.

"It's a bit more rugged terrain than you're used to," she pointed out.

He shrugged his shoulders as if it had all been a piece of cake, and Lindsay rolled her eyes at the typical male bravado. He grinned at her and she shook her head in indulgent exasperation, making him laugh.

"Why haven't we been up here before?" he asked.

"We've always had Lucy with us so I never suggested it," she told him. "I'm an overprotective mother, I guess."

"But it's perfectly fine for your husband to risk his neck, huh?" Danny remarked laughingly.

Lindsay smiled. "I was pretty sure you could handle it," she assured him.

"Yeah, I'm a regular cowboy," he proudly concurred. Leaning over in his saddle, he affectionately patted his mount's neck. "Me and Blue here are a crack team even if I do say so myself."

Lindsay looked critically at the black thoroughbred. Her father had bought him as a colt nearly five years before. She'd helped pick him out when she was in Montana visiting just before Lucy was born. He was a proud, disciplined animal with just that little hint of rebellion in his nature. It was no wonder that he and Danny had formed some sort of connection with each other. They were one of the same in so many ways.

"So, where to now?" Danny asked, straightening up in his saddle.

"It's not much further," she said as she squeezed Star's flanks with her thighs and clucked her tongue to chivvy her mare on her way again. "And it's more than worth the wait, believe me."

Danny discovered that for himself some fifteen minutes later when they finally reached their destination. "Wow!" he said, sliding down from his saddle and walking a little ways out across the alpine meadow to gain the full effect of the breathtaking view over the snow-capped mountains. It was like a picture postcard in its clarity, the chill, sunny weather casting everything into stunning high definition.

Ducking under his arm, Lindsay snuggled in close and wrapped her arm tightly around his waist. "So are you ready to admit it yet?" she asked, resurrecting a long-running debate about the relative merits of the New York and Montana sky-lines.

He shook his head. "Nah, never gonna happen," he drawled, thickening his accent slightly. "Nothin' beats it, not even this, but I am willing to compromise if ya interested?"

"Oh yeah?" she enquired ingeniously. "How's that?"

"I will admit it equals it," he conceded with a grin.

Lindsay tilted her head to one side as she brought to mind the famous vista of her adopted city. "I'll go with that," she eventually concluded.

Standing on her tip-toes, she kissed him soundly on the lips to seal the deal, and then wriggled out from under his arm. "Come on, let's eat," she said, going back towards the grazing horses to unhook the saddle-bags that contained their supplies.

Danny stood apart for a moment, watching as she happily laid out a large, plaid blanket on the ground for them to sit on. Kneeling down, she proceeded to unload and lay out their picnic lunch - cold chicken and coleslaw with crusty bread to start, followed by ripe, juicy peaches and two slices of Elizabeth's homemade pecan pie to finish.

It was the most animated Danny had seen her in a long time, and with that realisation came the inevitable guilt. He hadn't noticed her descent into depression and he should have done. Maybe they weren't part of each other's lives in the same way as they had been before they'd separated, but he knew her, and he should have known something wasn't quite right. She'd not just lost her sparkle with him; she'd lost it with everything else in her life too. Work, her friends no longer seemed to motivate her. Lucy was about the only thing that she seemed to find any sort of joy in, but even that had been tempered by a kind of weary listlessness.

And he hadn't cared…

He shook head in denial. No, that wasn't true. He'd not allowed himself to care, there was a difference. In order to combat his own pain, he'd been compelled to compartmentalise his feelings for Lindsay into the 'don't go there' category. He'd needed to move on, and so had forced himself to focus on his relationship with Rachel, rather than agonise over what might have been with his estranged wife.

He'd been angry at her too, for giving in so easily, for shutting him out when all he wanted was to be let back in. He knew that he hadn't been entirely blameless, but he'd done his best to make things right even so. But she'd just turned him away like he was some unwanted door-to-door salesman…

"Danny?"

He started a little. "Sorry – what?" he blurted.

She patted the blanket beside her in invitation. "Come and eat."

He nodded and dutifully moved to join her.

"Are you okay?" she asked, sensing the uneasiness in him as he sat down.

He forced a smile. "Yeah, I just…" He sighed. "This is going to be hard, Lindsay," he warned her. "I know we're making progress, but there's still so much for us to work though."

"And you think I'm underestimating what it's going to take?"

"No, I…" He paused and carefully considered his next words. "I just think you want it so badly, you don't want to believe in the possibility of failure."

He was right; she didn't, although he was wrong if he thought she didn't recognise that as a potential prospect. "So what do we do, Danny?" she asked. "Never relax and enjoy ourselves?"

"I'm not saying that…"

"You don't want to pretend," Lindsay cut in. "I get that, but it can't all be about the heavy stuff. You said we needed to pace ourselves, and you were right, but what do we do in the mean time, huh? Just ignore each other? I don't think I could handle that. We used to have so much fun, Danny. Our friendship was one of the biggest things we lost. We knew that, even before all of this."

He nodded. "Yeah, yeah, I know we did."

"So, can't we just like… well, date? No promises, no guarantees. You know, kind of like we were just starting out again?"

"Only without the rampant sex," Danny quipped, making her smile.

Drawing in a deep breath, he let it out slowly. "Yeah, we could do that," he eventually agreed. "Don't get me wrong, Lindsay, I do love you and I want to spend time with you. I just don't want there to be any misunderstanding about what that means."

"So ask me to marry you again."

"W-what?"

"Not now!" She laughed at his deer-caught-in-headlights expression. "I mean when - or if - we reach that point, ask me to marry you again. Up until then, we'll just treat it as a normal relationship with a normal level of commitment."

"This is normal?" he enquired with some amusement.

"_Relatively_ normal," she clarified.

"Right," he said, tongue in cheek.

She giggled and he smiled. It was a crazy idea, but it could work even so.

"So, do we have a deal?" she asked, offering him her hand.

"Yeah, we gotta deal," he replied, and they shook on it before he lifted their joined hands to his lips and pressed a kiss to the back of her knuckles.

A couple of hours later, they were headed back to the ranch, having enjoyed their first official date as a newly re-united couple. There had been a few awkward moments along the way, but generally it had passed smoothly. Consequently, they were both in high spirits as they emerged from a dense thicket of trees and rode out onto more open land.

They paused, reining in Blue and Star to savour the bird's eye view over the Monroe property. With the day so crystal-clear and bright, they could see Lindsay's parents' off-roader parked to the side of the stable block even from this distance away.

"Your Mom and Dad are back early," Danny remarked, glancing casually at his watch. "It's only three o'clock."

Lindsay nodded absently, and then her eyes widened as a kind of instinctive awareness hit her square in the solar plexus. "Lucy…" she breathed, the exhilarated flush draining rapidly from her cheeks in reaction.

Danny looked at her worriedly, infected with the same level of parental concern as she. "Come on," he said, jerking at the reins to turn his horse around. "Let's go."

Their hearts in their mouths, they took off at a gallop towards the waiting ranch house in the distance…

_**To be continued…**_

_Don't hate me...! :-) CharmedBec x_


	15. The Best Medicine

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi! Another long chapter this, mainly because Danny and Lindsay's conversation took an unexpected turn into a subject that I wasn't going to deal with until later on in the story. I'm not a writer who sticks rigidly to my story outline though – if events flow naturally out of a scene then I just let them happen. In the end, it's the small detours that make things more interesting.

Alright so enough of my waffle, let's get on with the show…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part **__**15 – The Best Medicine**_

"Ethan?" Jack Monroe called out to his stable-hand as he saw his daughter and son-in-law approaching at a speed that suggested they suspected something was untoward about his and Elizabeth's early return from their trip.

"Yeah?" The tall rangy youth called back in reply, emerging from the stable-block as Jack strode across the yard towards it.

"I need your help with the horses," Jack said, indicating the incoming mounts and their riders.

Ethan nodded and stood by his boss to wait.

"Lucy?" Lindsay demanded anxiously as she reined in Star and practically fell from her saddle.

Jack had to reach out to grab hold of her arm to prevent her from landing on her butt such was her haste. "She's fine," he quickly assured her.

"Well, not fine," he amended, "But nothing serious – just a stomach virus or something." He brushed a wayward tangle of hair away from his daughter's abnormally pale face. "Breathe," he instructed.

Lindsay let her breath go with a whoosh as the tension within her scaled down a notch. "I'm sorry, I just… when I saw your Jeep…"

Jack nodded. "First child, I get it. The worry doesn't go away when you get to your fourth, but you're more equipped to handle the little dramas by then, trust me."

Lindsay laughed in spite of herself. "Daddy, there is no way I'm having four children," she told him emphatically. "You're going to have to get your football team of grandkids from somewhere else. Two's about my limit – I'd stretch to three with some added incentive, but four? Not on your life."

"Your mother managed just fine," her father pointed out.

"Yeah well, she's super Mom, isn't she? Me? I'm more 'make it up as you go along and hope for the best' Mom."

"Well, you must be doing something right because I know of a certain sick little girl not too far from here who's been asking for her Mommy almost continually. Super Grams really isn't cutting it at present, and Super Gramps is pretty much surplus to requirements."

"That could never be true," Lindsay said, standing on her tip-toes and affectionately wrapping her arms around her father's neck. "Thanks," she murmured against his throat. "I guess I was panicking a bit, huh?"

"Just a bit," he replied as he drew her into a bear hug. "But you're welcome, baby. Now go give my little grand-daughter the best medicine life has to offer," he instructed as he released her from his embrace and lightly kissed her cheek.

"I love you, Daddy," she declared, reaching out to squeeze his hand before turning for the house.

"She really okay?" Danny asked as he handed Blue's reins to the returning Ethan, who had already secured Star in one of the nearby paddocks.

"Why don't you go and see for yourself?" his father-in-law suggested.

Danny grimaced. "I'm not good when she's sick."

"Mmm," Jack mused. "I always found it best to leave that kind of thing to the women too."

Danny laughed at that. "It's not that, it's just… I'm kind of a wimp when she cries," he admitted. "I always want to hit someone in retaliation."

"Daughters have a habit of doing that to you," Jack concurred. He looked at his son-in-law contemplatively. "So how are things?" he asked directly.

Feeling a little cornered, Danny rubbed at the back of his neck in agitation. "We're getting there," he replied in a non-committal tone.

Jack nodded. "She seems more centred," he remarked blandly.

Given his father-in-law's taciturn nature, Danny figured that was about as much encouragement as he was going to get under the circumstances. Still, it was better than nothing.

"Can I ask you something?" he said, deciding now was as good a time as any to tackle the issue that had been at the back of his mind since yesterday.

"Shoot."

"Lindsay told me about her friend Kelly's funeral? About what happened with the girl's Mom?"

Jack's expression darkened. "Talk about wanting to hit someone in retaliation," he remarked with feeling.

Danny nodded. "It's just that Lindsay gave the impression that nothing was ever really resolved?"

Jack sighed. "We made our peace with Marcus and Susan if that's what you're asking. It was never really the same between us after that though. We used to be such good friends, but something like that rips your whole life in two. Me and Elizabeth – we were the only ones whose child had survived and that set us apart. You try to move past it, but it's always there, hovering in the background like some uninvited guest at a party. In the end, you just have to accept that there's nothing you can do to change it and move on."

"So, she was sorry then? For what she said?"

"Susan, you mean?" Jack said. "Yes, I think so, although Beth would be the better one to ask about that. Of course, Lindsay refused to see her and we didn't want to push, not when she was still so fragile."

"And do they still live in town?" Danny asked. "Kelly's parents, I mean?"

Jack frowned. "What are you suggesting?"

"I just think that it's about time an apology was given and accepted that's all."

"Isn't it a little late for that?"

Danny shrugged. "Better late than never, I say."

"They've both moved on," his father-in-law insisted.

Danny shook his head. "Lindsay hasn't, not really," he disagreed. "She _says_ she understands, but I think there's still some nagging doubt in her mind. Logically, she knows that what was said was said out of grief and not meant personally, but I think accepting that is a different matter."

Jack didn't look convinced. "I can see what you're saying, but I just don't see the benefit of dredging up the past in that way, not when we've all fought so hard to put it behind us. It was sixteen years ago, Danny, it's time to move on."

If only it was that simple, Danny thought. Sixteen years ago or not, the implications on his marriage were very much of the present day. He understood why Jack was so reluctant, but he felt that it was time that Lindsay did something positive to shut the door on that part of her past. She had so many insecurities, was riddled with chronic self-doubt because of them, and this incident had been the start of all that. Yes, her personal issues had been compounded over the years by other events, but this was the trigger point even so.

He could see that Jack wasn't yet ready to entertain the idea however, so he wisely let it go. At least he'd satisfied himself that by suggesting it he wouldn't be doing more harm than good. If Kelly's Mom had been likely to turn Lindsay away then such a meeting was the last thing that she needed in her current state of mind.

He shrugged. "It was just a thought," he concluded and let it lie. "I should go and…" He jerked his thumb towards the house to illustrate his meaning.

Jack nodded absently, his brow creased in thought. Maybe he wasn't so sure that his son-in-law's suggestion was the best idea, but it had got him thinking nevertheless.

It was a start, Danny decided, and then turned on his heel and headed for the house.

**OOOOOO**

"Mom?"

Lindsay reached the top of the stairs just as her mother came out of the bathroom, carrying a bowl, wash cloth and towel in her hands. They exchanged a brief, one-armed hug before Elizabeth stepped back.

"Relax," she said, her voice calm and soothing. "She'll be fine."

"Did you call a doctor?" Lindsay enquired anxiously.

"Your sister is going to stop by later," her mother replied.

"She's heading out to Chris' place first though," she added, referring to her younger son. "Hannah came down with something similar last night. Lucy must have picked it up when she was over there a couple of days ago. Hannah's a lot better this afternoon apparently, so it seems to be just a twenty-four hour thing."

Lindsay nodded, only slightly reassured by that. Her niece Hannah was a couple of months younger than Lucy, but was considerably more robust. Not that Lucy was anything less than healthy, but still. "Dad said she was asking for me?"

Elizabeth smiled. "Yeah, she's like every other four year old under the sun in that. When she's feeling sick and miserable only Mommy will do."

"Whereas Daddy gets to be the fun one," Lindsay commented dryly.

Elizabeth chuckled. "That's the way it goes, honey. It may seem like the men get the better deal, but me? I'm not so sure. There is just something about being your child's one-and-only that grabs hold of the heart and never lets go."

She rubbed a soothing hand up and down Lindsay's spine. "Now, quit your worrying and come and give your little girl a great big hug. It'll make you – and her – feel so much better."

Lucy was reclining listlessly against a mound of propped-up pillows when they entered the darkened nursery, but she immediately perked up when she saw her Mom. "I sick, Mommy," she said sadly, holding up her arms in supplication. Her round little face was pale and clammy, and her eyes were red and swollen from her tears.

"Oh, I know, sweetie," Lindsay crooned in a sympathetic tone.

Reaching down, she gathered her little girl close in her arms and pressed a warm, comforting kiss to her temple. Continuing to murmur comfortingly to her, she turned and positioned herself on the bed so that Lucy was nestled snugly in her lap. Setting the bowl and towel on the nightstand so that they were within easy reach, Elizabeth helped rearrange the pillows to support Lindsay's back, and then tucked the bedclothes securely over the two of them.

"I'll be downstairs making a batch of my famous chicken soup if you need me," she said quietly, handing her daughter the damp wash cloth. "She'll need something light and nourishing in her stomach once the sickness dies down."

"Just make sure you keep her hydrated in the meantime, okay?" she added as she left the room.

Lindsay nodded absently, her attention firmly focused on her small daughter. "I frowed up," Lucy informed her as she mopped the little girl's sweaty brow and pressed copious kisses to her tear-dampened cheeks. "But I didn't eat too much choc-late and ice-cream, Mommy, I promise."

Lindsay couldn't help but smile at that. It reassured her more than anything else that, while Lucy was most definitely unwell, it wasn't anything too serious if she was still worried about getting a time-out. "I know, sweetie," she soothed. "You have a poorly tummy right now, that's all. Hannah has one too."

"She does?"

"Yes, Auntie Mel told Grams on the phone."

"Did Hannah give hers to me when we were playing?" her daughter asked.

Lindsay nodded. "Yes, but she didn't mean to. Sometimes poorly tummies can get passed on when we don't want them to."

"Like coughs and colds?" Lucy enquired.

"Like coughs and colds," Lindsay confirmed.

"'Kay," Lucy said, and snuggled in closer. Nestling her head against her mother's breast, she put her thumb in her mouth and heaved out a tired sigh.

Moved beyond words, Lindsay stroked her fingers through the silky strands of her daughter's honey-blonde hair and dropped another kiss to the top of her head. Her Mom was right – there was nothing like being your child's one-and-only. Rocking her little girl in her embrace, she began to hum a soft, soothing lullaby, much as she had done when Lucy was a tiny babe in arms.

Danny discovered them like that a couple of minutes later, and paused in the doorway to drink in the affecting sight. Lindsay as a mother was infinitely beautiful to him. He knew that she didn't see herself that way, but he couldn't get enough of her in that role. He loved her when she was the smart, sexy woman that he'd first fallen in love with, but there was just something about her interaction with Lucy that plucked at the proverbial heart-strings. Maybe it was because they were such a solid unit together - his girls, the women of his heart. He'd lost that unique sense of family when he and Lindsay had split. Lucy had got along fine with Rachel, but it wasn't the same.

It could never be the same. He'd watched Lindsay swell and bloom with the life that they'd created together, held her hand while she'd given birth, and then looked on while she'd nursed their tiny newborn at her breast, her face aglow with maternal tenderness. It was an intimacy that could never be equalled, and he didn't ever want to be without it again.

"Hey!" he said quietly, moving into the room and kneeling down by the side of the bed.

Lucy's eyelids fluttered open at the sound of his voice. "I sick, Daddy," she told him drowsily.

"Aww, I know, pumpkin," he crooned. He reached over and lightly stroked her cheek with the back of his forefinger. "Mommy's cuddles make it feel better though, huh?"

Lucy nodded, temporarily removing her thumb from her mouth to answer his question. "Mommy gives good cuddles," she agreed.

"Mmm, I know. They're the best," he concurred, winking irreverently at Lindsay, who reached out and cuffed him upside the head in response.

He grinned and then picked up Molly, Lucy's stuffed rabbit from the floor beside him. "I think Molly wants a cuddle too," he said, handing the toy to his little girl, who tucked it into the crook of her elbow before returning her thumb to her mouth. Rising up on his knees, he leaned over and tenderly kissed her forehead as her eyelashes feathered against the apples of her cheeks once more.

"Did your Mom call a doctor?" he asked Lindsay in low tones as he rose somewhat stiffly to his feet and grabbed a nearby chair to sit on.

Lindsay nodded. "Mel's going to stop by later," she told him, and then suppressed a smile at his noticeable wince as he sat down. "Problem there, babe?" she teased.

"Possibly a bit saddle-sore," he admitted with a grimace. "How did you manage to miss out, huh? You got calluses on your butt or somethin'?"

Lindsay laughed. "No, just more flesh," she told him. "It's a scientific fact that women carry more fat around their bottom and hips than men."

"Oh yeah? Seems to me they got a little more up front too," Danny replied, cupping his hands suggestively in front of his chest to illustrate his point.

"Danny!"

He let loose with a decidedly wicked chuckle and she couldn't help but smile. He grinned back at her, his blue eyes sparkling with mischief.

"You know something? I've kinda missed that," he confessed.

"What? Making off-colour remarks?" she said acidly. "I hadn't noticed any significant improvement in that regard."

Danny laughed. "No, the useless trivia you always spout. I've had to make do with Sid's weird and wonderful facts since we stopped working cases together."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah, you should be." Danny shuddered exaggeratedly. "I swear the guy gets creepier as he gets older."

Lindsay relaxed at that. She knew it was silly, but his confession had made her feel inexplicably guilty. It may have only been a small detail, but it reminded her of just how much her inability to confront her fears had robbed them of in the past year or more.

"I've missed working with you," she told him then, the words soft and hesitant.

Danny reached over and squeezed her fingers. "Right back at ya, babe. We made a good team on-and-off the clock, huh?"

Lindsay nodded in agreement. "Maybe we can tell Mac he can lift the embargo on us working together when we get back home?" she suggested.

"Sounds good to me," Danny concurred with an answering nod.

Lucy moaned then, stirring restlessly in her sleep before suddenly coming awake with an abrupt jerk. "I be sick again, Mommy!" she announced frantically.

"Danny - the bowl!" Lindsay instructed sharply

His heart hammering twenty to the dozen, Danny grabbed the plastic container off the nightstand and handed it to her mere seconds before Lucy's stomach rebelled. His hands fisted tightly at his sides as he watched his baby girl retch and vomit. When her pitiful sobs filled the room shortly afterward, his heart squeezed painfully inside of his chest at the plaintive sound. Unable to stand it, he went to rinse out the bowl in the bathroom while Lindsay comforted their crying child as best she could.

When he returned a minute or so later, Lindsay had risen from the bed and was pacing the room with Lucy clinging tightly to her neck. "Ssh, ssh," she murmured as she jigged and swayed with her sobbing child held close in her arms. "It's all right now, baby, it's all right."

"I no be sick no more," Lucy wailed incoherently. "I don't like it. Make it stop now, Mommy. Make it stop."

Faced with a plea like that, Danny probably would have rashly promised her anything. Made of sterner stuff where their daughter was concerned however, Lindsay steeled her heart and refused to pledge the impossible.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart. Mommy can't do that," she said in a low, calming tone.

"Yes, you can, Mommy. Yes, you can," Lucy sobbed piteously against her neck.

Cradling the back of her little girl's head in the palm of her hand, Lindsay pressed a comforting kiss to her damp temple. "I can't, peanut, because you see if you're not sick you won't get better," she explained.

"W-why?" Lucy hiccupped, lifting her head to look down into her mother's face, her childish hysteria slowing as her innate curiosity got the better of her.

"Do you know _why_ you're sick?" Lindsay asked as she sat down on the edge of the mattress with her little girl straddling her lap.

"No." Lucy shook her head, sniffling a little as her Mom tenderly thumbed away the tears on her cheeks.

"It's because some tiny bugs accidentally got inside your tummy while you weren't looking."

"And Hannah's too?"

"And Hannah's too," Lindsay confirmed. "And do you know what Mr Tummy said when he saw those naughty bugs?"

Already caught up in the story, Lucy shook her head. "No, tell me, Mommy. Tell me!"

"He said 'Eew!" Lindsay scrunched up her face in exaggerated disgust and Lucy giggled. "I don't like you in my house, you nasty bugs. Out with you, out with you right now!"

"So I frow up to get the bugs out," Lucy concluded, "'Cus Mr Tummy says so."

"Exactly," Lindsay said, smoothing a gentle hand over her young daughter's tangled curls. "I know it's not nice, but when all the bugs are out, you'll stop being sick, I promise. So you have to be a big, brave girl until then, okay?"

"Okay," Lucy agreed with a solemn nod. "You'll still give me lots of get better cuddles though, won't you, Mommy?" she asked anxiously.

"Of course I will, honey," Lindsay assured her.

"I cold," Lucy told her then.

"How about we snuggle back under the covers to get warm again then, huh?"

"Mommy too?"

"Mommy too," Lindsay said, manoeuvring herself so that she lay on her side in the narrow bed. Lucy burrowed close like a joey in its mother's pouch, and she tucked the covers over them, cocooning her sick little daughter in both warmth and love.

His wife was a god damn genius, Danny decided. He'd have never in a million years thought of turning their daughter's illness into a rather macabre story like that. It was exactly the right way to deal with Lucy however. Their little girl had inherited her parents' propensity for all things scientific. She just loved to know the 'how and why' of things. Bizarrely, the thought of tiny bugs crawling around in her stomach didn't seem to bother her any. Lindsay may think of herself as a 'make it up as you go along and hope for the best' Mom, but as Jack had concluded earlier, she was definitely doing something right.

Approaching the bed, he could see that Lucy was already sleeping, her chest moving up and down in a steady, measured rhythm. It constantly amazed him how children could fall asleep at the drop of a hat, but right now he was grateful for the phenomenon. Perching on the edge of the mattress, he bent over and lightly kissed her cheek and then lifted his head to look at Lindsay.

"I'm just going to grab a shower," he told her quietly. "I'll sit with her so you can do the same later if you like."

"Thanks," Lindsay whispered back, gazing up at him with large, soulful eyes.

"No problem," he replied and then couldn't resist dipping his head to press his mouth firmly against hers.

Her hand rose to cup his cheek as their lips met, and she smiled rather wistfully at him when he drew back.

"What?" he asked quizzically, instinctively responding to the sudden melancholy he could see in her eyes.

"It's nothing." She shook her head, trying to clear the sense of regret.

"Tell me," he persisted.

"It's been hard doing this alone," she confessed with a distinctive catch in her voice. "You've always been there for Lucy, but…"

"There's been no-one there for you when she was sick, out-of-sorts, or simply being a royal pain in the butt?" he finished for her.

Lindsay nodded. "I know that wasn't your choice." She closed her eyes. "I convinced myself I could handle it…" she broke off and sadly shook her head.

"You managed fine, Linds," he reassured her. "All right so it wasn't the ideal, but Lucy's a happy, well-adjusted kid despite all of that. If there's one thing we have done right throughout all of this, it's to put Lucy first. Apart from in the beginning when everything was falling apart, we've not let our troubles get in the way of being her parents. It sounds like a crazy thing to say, but I'm quite proud of us for that. It doesn't turn out that way for every family in our situation, you know."

"I know," Lindsay said and then sighed. "Can we not talk about this anymore? I don't want to think about shared custody arrangements - I want us to focus on becoming a proper family again."

"We'll always be family, Linds, no matter what happens. We have a beautiful child - who may have been somewhat unexpected, but she's ours and that's something that'll bind us together for a lifetime."

"Which would be small compensation," Lindsay told him. "When what I want is you. I still can't believe how badly I messed everything up…"

"Hey!" he said softly. "You're not alone in the messing-up department, you know. There are so many things I could have done differently. What matters now is that we recognise that and find a way to avoid making the same mistakes in the future."

"You honestly think we can do that?"

"Would I be here if I didn't?"

"You said you thought we might fail," Lindsay said in a small voice.

She'd handled that conversation fine up in the mountains. Rationally, she knew that it was something that they had to face, but it had unsettled her even so. She was fighting her insecurities with everything in her, but she couldn't quite shut off the painful thought that she was believing in an impossible dream. Romantic love had always been so transient to her. Danny had lasted longer than most, but they'd not arrived where they were today without some serious detours. She hadn't been enough for Mark or Simon – was she truly enough for the man who put them both into the shadows?

Danny sighed. "I said we had to accept that as a possibility and we do. But don't for one second think that I view that as any kind of inevitability. I don't. I love you, Lindsay. I want you in my life. I truly believe we have what it takes to make it through, but there are no guarantees, there never is. We have to trust that what we have together is strong enough to carry us through."

"You're always so confident though."

Danny let out a self-deprecating laugh at that. "No, I'm not. You think I don't look at myself in the mirror sometimes and think I'm totally lacking? Wonder if I'm truly deserving of your love?"

"Danny…"

"I treated you like crap over the Ruben thing," he interrupted. "You can spin it any way you like, but I let my own selfish concerns cause undeserving pain to the best thing in my life. I wasn't thinking about you – I was thinking of myself, of Rikki. You didn't figure – not because I didn't care, but because I didn't see you as part of what I… no, what _we_ were going through. You were completely separate from that and that was all that mattered to me at the time, everything else in my life was periphery."

He shook his head, still angry at himself for his behaviour all these years later. "I was wrong, _so _wrong," he told her, "But I was utterly blind to the damage I was causing. Do you have any idea what it felt like to have you tell me you'd fallen in love with me, knowing that what I'd done had betrayed everything that we'd been to each other? It was the moment that I realised that I'd become someone I hated. I wanted to take it back, rewind time, undo all those wrongs, but I couldn't. All I could do was fight for a second chance and do everything in my power to make sure I was worthy of it." He shrugged. "You probably should have told me to go to hell."

"I couldn't do that." Lindsay wiped at the tears sliding down her cheeks, her voice croaky. "There were times when I wanted to, but I couldn't do it. I loved you. You hurt and betrayed me, but I loved you, and I knew…" She sucked in a shuddering breath. "I knew you were sorry. I truly believed that you regretted what happened and somehow… Somehow, despite all my insecurities, I trusted that what we had together was worth fighting for. I don't regret giving you a second chance, Danny. The mistake was acting as if what happened didn't matter, pretending that we could just move on without any consequences."

"Which was my mistake too," Danny said, wondering how they'd managed to get onto this subject, but knowing that it was something that they had to confront. "I was so afraid of losing you; I didn't want to face up to the reality of the situation. When you fell pregnant, I knew it was something that couldn't remain unacknowledged between us, but I allowed myself to believe that a confession and a promise of no repeat would be enough. We'd lost the trust though, and when it was put to the test…" He shook his head regretfully. "Well, here we are…"

"Yeah, here we are," Lindsay echoed.

They looked at each other.

"Bad timing, huh?" Danny said in a rueful tone.

"I want to run away from it," Lindsay admitted. "I don't want to know, I don't want to hear, but we have to talk about it. Don't misunderstand me - I don't harbour any resentment towards you because of it anymore. It's in the past and you're forgiven, but it shaped what we became and I don't think we can get away from that. I think we've managed to regain some of the trust we lost, but it's still rather patchy in places. We need to fix those cracks so that if we're ever tested again, we're strong enough to withstand the storm."

"You've got no argument from me," Danny said. "I'm just not entirely sure how to go about it."

"I think it's going to be one of the most difficult things for us to resolve," Lindsay said. "And as much as I want to put it off, I think we should probably deal with it sooner rather than later, don't you?"

Danny nodded. "Discussing it over our child's sick-bed is perhaps not the most appropriate time though, huh?" he remarked.

Lindsay looked down at their slumbering daughter. "No," she agreed. "And I still need to tell you the rest of my story, but after that maybe?"

Danny nodded. "Yeah," he concurred. "Right then…" He sucked in a whistling breath through pursed lips and rose decisively to his feet. "I'll go take that shower."

Lindsay watched him leave, her heart filled with nervous apprehension. She'd been so focused on her need to have Danny back in her life; she hadn't properly considered what achieving that goal would entail. The next few months were going to be tough and extraordinarily painful. She just hoped that she had the emotional strength to withstand that onslaught because, deep down inside, she knew that the ultimate outcome would be worth the heartache.

Her attention was distracted by Lucy then, who stirred in her arms, whimpering in protest as her stomach cramps once again returned. "I be brave, Mommy," she said miserably, her eyes full of unshed moisture.

"I know you will, sweetie," Lindsay murmured, kissing and stroking her clammy little face. "But it's okay to cry, you know. Everybody cries when horrible things happen. That's what God made cuddles for – to make it better when you cry."

"I need a cuddle now, Mommy," Lucy announced as her stomach clutched and heaved.

Her marriage troubles set to one side for the time being, Lindsay concentrated her efforts on providing the best medicine that life had to offer...

**OOOOOO**

_**Down**__**stairs in the kitchen, an hour later…**_

"Mmm, smells like chicken soup," Jack Monroe said as he came in through the back door.

His wife smiled at him. "You're going to have to wait your turn," she warned as she stirred the bubbling contents of the huge pot on the stove. "I'm sending a container over to Annabel and Chris for Hannah, and then there's our little patient upstairs to think of."

"She doing okay?"

"I think the sickness is subsiding a little. Mel arrived a couple of minutes ago, she's upstairs with Lindsay and Danny now."

Jack nodded as he sat down at the kitchen table.

"Did you talk to Danny outside earlier?" Elizabeth asked after a beat.

"We had a conversation," her husband told her succinctly.

"Jack!" She shot him a censorious look over her shoulder. "You could try to be a bit more encouraging, you know."

"What?" he said, shooting her a small grin in return, "And break the habit of a lifetime?"

Elizabeth shook her head in exasperation.

"I know you're his number one fan," Jack said, serious now, "But we barely know him, Beth. Not really and Lindsay is so vulnerable right now."

Giving the simmering soup one last stir, Elizabeth replaced the lid on the pan and turned away from the stove to face him.

"I think you're underestimating her," she said. "Our daughter is a strong woman, she's had to be. And maybe Danny isn't exactly the husband we envisaged for her, but he's the right fit even so. Don't ask me how I know, I just do. He loves her - anyone with eyes can see that. Would he really be here - after all they've been through - if he didn't?"

Jack sighed. "He thinks that Lindsay should talk to Susan Broomfield," he said.

Despite the serious subject matter, Elizabeth smiled. "She told him," she said with quiet satisfaction. "I wasn't sure if she would to be honest. I think she knew that she had to confide in him, but doing so was easier said than done."

"Why?"

"Because she was so frightened of being rejected, Jack – like she has been so many times in the past when she's opened up in that way. I never really understood how all this tied together until recently. We've always been more worried about the direct trauma to Lindsay herself than the ricochet effect on the rest of her life. I know that to us it seems as if the past ought to remain in the past, but if Danny thinks that this is something that Lindsay needs to do then he's probably right."

"You trust his instincts over ours?"

"No, I trust that he knows our daughter in ways that we never could," Elizabeth replied. "And you do too or you wouldn't have brought up the subject. You can't fool me, Jack Monroe – we've been married for forty years. You don't want to admit it because you can't help feeling protective towards your baby girl, but you're impressed by our son-in-law's level of commitment as much as I am. You thought that after over a year apart, he might just decide to cut his losses and run. And you also knew that you couldn't really blame him if he did."

"Well, I don't know about that," he humphed.

"Yeah, you do," Elizabeth continued on relentlessly. "You see the way he is with little Lucy, how he looks at Lindsay, how she loves him in spite of his flaws, and he reminds you of yourself, of us."

Jack was silent for a long moment and then his lips quirked up into a begrudging smile. "All right," he admitted, "But let's just keep that between us, okay? It'd ruin my grizzly bear reputation if it ever got out."

Elizabeth laughed. "Don't worry, your secret's safe with me."

"What secret?" their eldest daughter enquired from the doorway, her doctor's bag still in hand.

"Never you mind," her father told her. "How is Lucy?"

"She's doing okay. It's definitely the same thing Hannah had. You just need to keep an eye on her temperature, make sure she stays hydrated, and then give her something light to eat when the sickness dies down… which from the smell of things," she added with a smile. "You've already got in hand."

"Mel, I raised four children. I know the drill," her mother told her dryly.

Mel nodded, moving further into the room and setting her bag down on the floor near the table. She took a seat next to her father. "I spoke to Brad," she said, referring to her practice partner and brother-in-law. "He's had a few calls. It seems to be doing the rounds of the pre-school class. Hopefully we can keep it contained to just that or I'm probably going to have to work a few extra shifts this week."

"I can look after the boys if you need me to," Elizabeth offered.

"Thanks Mom."

"So how are Lindsay and Danny coping?" Elizabeth asked.

Mel smiled. "Lindsay seems to have things in perspective, but Danny's rather freaked out. It's kind of sweet actually."

"You've changed your tune," Elizabeth observed astutely.

Mel shrugged. "Yeah well, after this morning, I couldn't really bear a grudge."

"This morning?"

Mel looked uneasily between her parents. "Lindsay didn't tell you?"

"I think she was more concerned about Lucy," Elizabeth replied. "What exactly is it that we should know?"

Mel sighed. It was all over town so it wasn't as if they weren't going to find out sooner or later.

"She went back yesterday," she told them. "To the diner, I mean. I don't really know all the details, but I think she had a pretty severe panic attack. Holly called here and Danny answered. He drove into town to pick her up. When I found out what happened this morning, I barged over here like a bull in a china shop. I couldn't believe that no-one had called me…"

"And?" Elizabeth prompted.

"And I got told in no uncertain terms to back off," Mel admitted. "Look, I don't know exactly what's going on between them…" She thought it best to refrain from divulging the fact that her sister had clearly spent the night in Danny's bed. "All I know is Lindsay was adamant that this was her business and that I had no right to interfere. And Danny… well, he backed her up on that, but he also said that he understood my concerns. It was hard for me to stay mad at him after that."

Jack sighed. "I know his heart's in the right place, Elizabeth," he said to his wife. "But I still think he's pushing her too far with this."

"Ahh Dad," Mel cut in hesitantly. "I don't think Danny actually knew anything about it. You know what Lindsay's like when she gets an idea in her head. I mean she's clearly been having trouble with all of that again, maybe she thought if she faced it…" She broke off with a shrug.

"And she said she had no regrets," she added. "Maybe it wasn't the best way to go about it, but I think it tore down a few walls even so."

"And was clearly the catalyst for her finally confiding in Danny," Elizabeth put in. "As much as we want to interfere, they have to find their own way through this or what's the point? It's the reason we gave them time alone, Jack," she reminded him.

"I know, I know, I just wish it didn't mean raking over the past like this. Doesn't she deserve a little peace?"

"Yes," Elizabeth replied, "But something tells me that this is the only way she's going to find it. No pain, no gain, isn't that what they say? It's hard to watch her suffer, I know, but, in the end, if it brings her happiness, won't it be worth it?"

There was only one possible response to that. "I hate it when you're right," Jack grumbled, not completely willing to concede the point despite knowing the battle was lost.

Elizabeth exchanged a look with her eldest daughter. "Men!" she said. "Can't live with 'em…

"Can't live without them," Mel finished for her and then laughed.

"So," she said to her mother after she'd leaned over and planted an affectionate kiss on her father's cheek. "Is there any of that chicken soup going spare? I have four hungry mouths to feed back home, and if I turn up empty-handed…" she trailed off meaningfully

Elizabeth sighed in resignation. "I'll make another pot," she said, turning back to the stove.

_**To be continued…**_

_**A/N2: **__Sorry if the ending is a bit lame. I couldn't think of how to round off the scene so it just kind of peters out. And I know I was horribly mean to poor little Lucy, but I wanted to show more of Lindsay as a Mom, and her and Danny taking on the responsibility of parenting together rather than apart._

_Anyway, until next time then… CharmedBec x_


	16. Lessons in Love

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Yay! Actually managed to post this today. Work has been pretty manic this week so I wasn't sure I'd finish it in time. Anyway, that's all from me, so please read on…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part **__**16 – Lessons in Love**_

_**The following evening…**_

"I'm being paranoid, aren't I?" Lindsay said to her mother after she'd confessed her worry about Danny's unexpected decision to relocate back to the guest-cabin for his final night's stay in Montana.

He'd slept up at the main house the previous evening to help nurse the sick Lucy, but had chosen not to do so tonight. Lindsay wasn't quite sure what to make of that. It felt as if he was withdrawing from her, deliberately putting distance between them when they should have been making a conscious effort to close the gap. She'd tried to ignore those concerns, but her efforts had mostly been in vain. So, after putting Lucy to bed, she'd sought out her mother for some maternal guidance on the matter.

"A little perhaps," Elizabeth said in answer to her daughter's question. "Even if Danny does want some breathing space, I don't see why that should automatically be viewed as a bad thing. You've been living separate lives for months now, Lindsay. It's going to take time for you to properly find your way back to each other again. You didn't spend every waking moment of your free time together when you were first dating, did you?"

Lindsay shook her head. "No," she admitted and then sighed. "I know I'm probably reading more into this than I should be…"

"But it bothers you even so?" Elizabeth guessed shrewdly.

"Yes," Lindsay admitted, raking nervous fingers through her hair and mussing it up in the process.

"So talk to him about it," was her mother's sensible advice as she pushed back her chair and rose to her feet.

Turning away from the table, she bent to remove a quartet of individual chicken pot-pies from the oven. Setting the tray down on a heat-proof mat on the counter, she proceeded to load two of them into a cloth-lined picnic basket, to which she also added a loaf of crusty bread and some butter. When she was done, she carefully closed the basket lid to keep the food warm and turned back to her daughter.

"Why don't you take this down to him?" she suggested, "Share a meal and some proper conversation with your husband. The two of you have understandably been wrapped up in your little girl the last couple of days, but I think it's important that you take some time out for yourselves before Danny leaves tomorrow. I'll watch Lucy for you - although I imagine she'll sleep straight through tonight anyway."

"Thanks, Mom," Lindsay said, rising to her feet and taking the offered picnic basket from her mother's outstretched hand. "You know maybe if Danny and I learned a few of yours and Dad's relationship secrets we might just have a better chance of making it through this."

"I don't think there's a perfect recipe for a happy marriage, Lindsay," her mother told her. "You have to find the ingredients that work best for you. If I have any advice to give, then it's to make sure that you keep talking to each other. And remember to have fun every once in a while too. It can be easy to get caught up in everyday concerns and forget what brought you together in the first place. Keep reminding yourselves of that and the hard times will be easier to ride out."

Lindsay nodded, taking a moment to absorb her Mom's wise counsel. It wasn't anything she and Danny hadn't already figured out for themselves to be honest. Lack of communication was their biggest problem. Too often in the past, they'd allowed things to reach breaking point before they'd sat down together and talked it out. Of course, by then, resolution was an uphill struggle as their painful split had so devastatingly proved.

Thankfully, they were now facing up to the big issues that had rocked the foundations of their marriage, but unfortunately were still stuck in the habit of avoiding the little concerns, Lindsay realised. She'd allowed herself to get into a state over the simple matter of Danny staying at the guest-house tonight, rather than just going to talk to him about it. She was so afraid that she might hear something negative that she ended up missing out on any positive re-enforcement that might be on offer too. Determined not to keep repeating the same mistakes, she bid her mother a quiet good night and turned resolutely for the door.

The sun was on the verge of dipping below the horizon as she walked the gravelled path towards the out-lying cabin. The sky was stained a deep indigo colour and streaked liberally with orange fire. Somehow the glorious technicolour of nature's farewell to the day calmed the butterflies fluttering about in her stomach, and she was therefore much calmer by the time she knocked on the cabin door to announce her presence.

"Hey!" Danny said, greeting her with a warm smile as he opened the door.

"I come bearing gifts," she said, holding up the basket as evidence.

"Smells good," he observed, as he stood aside to let her pass.

"My Mom's chicken pot-pie," she said, as she stepped over the threshold and moved towards the cabin's small kitchen area.

"Like the one you used to make?" he asked eagerly, shutting the door and following on her heels like a hungry puppy.

"I still make it, Danny," she told him, grabbing a kitchen glove to unload the hot food her mother had provided for them.

"Well yeah, but…" He lifted his shoulders in a resigned shrug.

Lindsay nodded, her gaze downcast, and then drew in a deep breath, refusing to wallow in futile regrets. "Well, brace yourself for the genuine article," she told him. "Mine's just an inferior copy."

She paused, gnawing lightly on her bottom lip in agitation. "You don't mind if I join you, do you?" she enquired hesitantly

"I've not kicked you out the door yet, have I?" was Danny's rather flippant response.

"Danny…" she murmured in return, his name a quiet protest.

Reading the genuine distress on her face, Danny reached across the counter and placed his hand over hers. "Did you think I would?" he asked her gently.

"I… I didn't know. You wanted to stay here rather than at the house." She shrugged her shoulders uncertainly. "I thought that you might prefer to be alone."

"Even if that were true, it wouldn't be a rejection of you," Danny assured her. "Everything has been happening so fast. I just needed some time to adjust that's all."

Coming around the counter, he wrapped his arms around her waist from behind and rested his chin on her shoulder. "Don't get me wrong, this is definitely what I want, but staying up at the house is a bit much right now. It's not you, or Lucy… it's the whole extended family thing. I like your parents, but it feels kind of awkward playing the dutiful son-in-law with our marriage the way it is."

"They don't blame you for our problems, Danny," she reassured him, leaning back against the solid wall of his chest as the knots in her stomach began to unwind.

"I know," he said. "Your Mom's been great and your Dad…"

"Is my Dad," Lindsay supplied with a hint of knowing in her voice.

Danny chuckled. "Yeah," he concurred and then sighed. "Your family are so protective towards you, and there's a certain weight of expectation that comes with that. Most of the time, I'm feel like I'm failing to measure up if you want to know the truth."

Reassured, Lindsay twisted in his hold and encircled his neck with her arms. She understood that weight of expectation; she'd been feeling it herself for years. Her family were loving, but added unintentional pressure with their strong desire to see her happy and healthy again. She didn't think she'd ever be completely free of the trauma of her past, but she was learning to live with it. The brutal shooting of her friends would always be part of who she was, and accepting that was part of the battle. It was a fight that she herself was slowly winning, but one that her family were still struggling with.

Satisfied now that her earlier fears were unfounded, she rose up on her tip-toes and confidently pressed her mouth to his. Danny immediately tightened his arms around her waist and pulled her closer, his lips parting willingly under the pressure of her kiss. The ensuing embrace simmered with a hint of latent passion, but was mainly imbued with the strong resilience of their shared love for one another.

When they eventually drew apart, Danny licked his lips and cleared his throat, shaken to the core by the first proper kiss that Lindsay had initiated between them in almost a year and a half now.

"O-kaay," he said, his voice slightly hoarse. "Maybe we should eat before it gets cold, huh?"

Lindsay laughed and lightly touched the side of his face before turning back to the counter to slice the bread. Immersing himself in similar domesticity, Danny laid the table and poured them each a glass of crisp, white wine from a bottle he'd discovered in the refrigerator. Once the food was served, they sat down on opposite sides of the table and took a first taste of their home-cooked meal.

"So, what's the verdict?" Lindsay asked him a few minutes later as she sipped delicately at her wine.

"It's good," Danny told her, enthusiastically loading up another fork full to prove his point, "Although if I had to pick, I think I'd probably choose yours over your Mom's."

Lindsay giggled. "No you wouldn't," she rebutted knowingly, and then watched as the sly smile tugging at the corners of his lips transformed into a fully-fledged grin.

She knew that she was an ok cook, but her Mom had a kind of instinctive touch that Lindsay could never hope to possess. Her mother didn't see food preparation as a chore. She cooked with love and intense enjoyment and somehow that communicated itself to the food that ended up on the plate. Everything about the pot-pie was perfect – the chicken was moist and tender, the pastry buttery and flaky, plus exactly the right blend of herbs had been used to season the rich, flavoursome sauce that bound it all together.

"You've gotta learn to take a compliment when it's given, babe," Danny told her.

"I would if it wasn't just a ploy to get on my good side," she teased him.

Danny laughed before his expression turned serious again. "I mean it though, Linds," he said. "It's important that you listen when someone compliments you rather than just dismissing it out of hand. I want you to believe me when I tell you that you're beautiful, and right now I'm not so sure that you do."

"It's just… it's hard sometimes," she admitted.

"Why?"

"I guess because I don't always believe I deserve what's being said," she told him truthfully, and then couldn't quite fathom out the soft smile that crossed his features in response.

"Did I say something funny?" she asked confusedly.

Danny shook his head. "No, no, I'm sorry. I was just thinking that a few days ago you would have done anything to avoid telling me that."

"I suppose that's true," she concurred. "I'm not saying it's easy, Danny, but it's definitely getting easier. I just needed to get over that first hurdle, I guess."

"So do you feel up to going for the next one?" he asked her.

Lindsay paused for a moment and then nodded her assent. "What do you want to know?"

"Maybe we can start with why you struggle to accept compliments," he said. "I know what happened with Kelly's Mom must have some bearing on that, but I still think there's more to it. The other morning, after we, umm… well…"

"Had the S-E-X…" she filled in for him, her tone light and mischievous.

"Lindsay," he warned, then shook his head in exasperation. "Now you've distracted me," he complained.

Lindsay smiled briefly in response, and then quickly sobered. She was well aware that she was avoiding again and she knew that was anything but constructive. "I'm sorry," she apologised. "Go on."

Danny took a swallow of his wine before continuing. "When I said we needed to be mindful of your depression, it was like a barbed wire fence had gone up around you," he explained. "You were totally convinced I would judge you lacking somehow, and you inferred that it wouldn't be the first time someone had treated you that way."

She stared at him, her doe-like eyes moist and her bottom lip quivering with emotion. "Doesn't it bother you?" she asked him. "Being with someone like me, I mean? You can't deny that your life would be so much simpler if you didn't have all of this to deal with."

"But then I'd be without the woman I love, wouldn't I?" he returned.

"You'd find someone else though," Lindsay said. "You already did in fact."

Danny shook his head. "No, I found someone I could connect with, that's not the same thing. Rachel wasn't you, Lindsay, she didn't even come close."

Lindsay sighed. "I wish all the men in my life felt that way about me," she mused.

"So which ones didn't?" Danny asked.

Lindsay shrugged. "Take your pick."

"Let's go with door number one, huh?" he suggested.

"Mark Hennessey," Lindsay said, her voice vibrating with a hint of long-held pain.

She lifted her gaze to Danny's and shot him a questioning look. "Are you sure you want to do this?" she asked.

"What? Hear about my wife's love for another man?" he said. "No, not especially, but it has to be done. Honest and full disclosure, that's what we agreed, right?"

"Right," Lindsay concurred with a nod, and then drew in a deep breath. "Mark was my first real boyfriend," she explained. "I was eighteen, a freshman in college, and pretty damn clueless when it came to dating. My High School years were… we're kind of jumping ahead of ourselves here, you know," she pointed out.

"Nobody said we had to do this in chronological order, Lindsay," Danny told her. "It's like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. It doesn't really matter what order the individual pieces are fitted together, the end result is still the same."

Lindsay nodded. "Okay so let's just say college was a new start for me. I finally felt like I was living again. I was away from home – only in Bozeman maybe, but far enough away to achieve some separation from everything that had come before. The shooting had made headlines in the city, but I didn't get recognised everywhere I went like I did at home. Some of the other students must have known who I was, but it was hardly ever mentioned, and Mark… Mark was from out of state so he didn't have a clue. He just thought I was a normal – if slightly naïve – eighteen year old student."

"And I had a proper goal in life too," she went on. "I wanted to study forensics, work in a Crime Lab. Brianna… she was the CSI who… err…" Her expression became pained and she trailed off. "She…"

"It's okay," Danny soothed, reaching across the table to entwine his fingers with hers. "Your Mom told me about her. She also told me Brianna stayed in touch with you afterwards?" he prompted.

Lindsay nodded, grateful that she didn't have to relive that part of her ordeal just now. She wasn't sure she had the strength for that yet. "Yeah," she said. "Brianna was my friend, the only real friend I had back then. She was ten years older than me, but we were still friends. She let me visit the Lab; ask all the questions I wanted to ask. It was only later that I realised that wasn't exactly normal procedure."

"Some cases stick with you," Danny said. "You know you're supposed to detach yourself, but there are those that just grab hold and refuse to let go."

"Like the mermaid girl in Central Park," Lindsay commented, recalling the senseless slaughter that had given her endless sleepless nights. It was the lack of reason behind the crime that had gotten to her, plus the fact that the young victim had been a country girl like herself.

Danny nodded, remembering how she'd struggled with it. "Exactly," he said.

"Well anyway," Lindsay continued. "I'd finally figured out what I wanted to do with my life and it gave me a real sense of purpose again. I was determined to stop being the victim and start becoming the survivor that I wanted to be."

"And that meant going out and socialising like any other typical freshman would. It was hard to start with. I was so used to my own company; I'd forgotten how to act around people of my own age. I felt really awkward, was sure everyone would know that I'd been a social outcast for the past three years."

"Eventually I began to relax though. I made friends and finally started to feel part of something again. I went out on a few dates as well, nothing too heavy, but it boosted my confidence in that area. It was just before spring break of my first year when I met Mark…"

_**Thirteen years earlier…**_

_The party was heaving, way too many bodies packed into too smaller space. __Lindsay tapped her room-mate, Caitlyn's shoulder to attract her attention, leaning in close to be heard above the pounding music. _

"_I'm going to grab another drink," __she said. "You want one?"_

"_No, I'm good," Caitlyn said, as she shimmied her hips with the rhythm of the bass, her movements a siren call to the object of her affection who __had been watching her from across the room for the past twenty minutes. _

_Melting__ back into the crowd, Lindsay left her friend to her entertainments and went in search of some refreshment. Pushing her way through the gyrating bodies, she located the drinks table and grabbed a bottle of Coke before heading outside for some fresh air. As she descended the flight of steps to the brightly-lit garden area below, a burst of raucous laughter was the only warning she got before she was jostled on both sides by a pair of drunken frat-boys, who barged past her like a couple of rampaging boars. She cursed her three-inch heels as her footing immediately went out from under her._

"_Whoa!" A strong hand caught hold of her elbow in the nick of time, keeping her upright when she'd resigned herself to the inevitable humiliation__ of falling on her butt with everyone around to witness it. _

"_Watch where you're going you dumb-ass idiots!" he__r rescuer yelled after his retreating peers before he turned his attention back to an embarrassed Lindsay. "You okay?" he asked her._

"_Y-yeah," she stuttered, supremely aware of the erratic thump-th__ump of her heart. _

_The feel of his warm fingers on her flesh sent skitters of delicious anticipation down her spine. She'd never __felt so immediately in tune with another person before and it took her breath away…_

"A regular Superman, huh?" Danny cut in acidly, breaking Lindsay's reverie as she recalled the almost movie-like meeting with her first love. It sounded like such a cliché – hero rescues damsel in distress - but it was exactly how it had happened.

Even though she'd judiciously refrained from telling Danny about the instant attraction she'd felt for Mark that night, she could see the unnecessary jealousy that he was struggling to contain. "If you wanted to make a better first impression you probably shouldn't have told me to call Mac 'Sir,'" she said dryly.

"Or maybe actually called me by my name every once in a while," she added to press home her point.

"But you like it when I call you Montana," Danny said, his voice as smooth as molasses and his blue eyes soft and seductive.

The shivers were back again and this time it wasn't an eighteen year old boy who had stirred those emotions within her. This was a fully grown man in his thirties - her man in actual fact.

She smiled at him with affectionate possession. "Now maybe," she told him, "But back then I just thought you were an arrogant jerk."

"Nice," Danny remarked, and then grinned widely at her. "At least I made an impression," he said.

She laughed at the self-satisfaction in his tone. "Oh yeah, you definitely made an impression," she agreed.

She had misunderstood him at first, but there'd been a distinct spark of attraction there even so. It had annoyed the hell out of her at the time, but now she wondered why she'd ignored it for so long.

"So let me guess," Danny said. "First love Mark? Star athlete, clean-cut, all-round good guy, huh?"

Lindsay laughed at the cutting tone in his voice. "It wasn't that cliché," she told him. "He played basketball, yeah, but he wasn't on the team. He was well liked, but he wasn't A-list if you get what I mean. He was just a normal guy. We sat and talked for about half an hour that night and I thought that'd be it, but he called me a couple of days later to ask me out. He'd gotten my number from Caitlyn. He shared a couple of classes with her and knew we were roomies."

"So we started dating and I fell in love – totally, freely, head-over-heels – like you do when you first experience that feeling of being completely connected to another person. I was still pretty shy and totally inexperienced when it came to sex, but he didn't pressure me like some boys of that age would have done. He let me take the physical side of our relationship at my own pace. When we did eventually sleep together, I was ready and willing. I guess I was lucky. My first time was a good experience, not exactly mind-blowing, but a bit more than…"

"Wham, bam, thank-you, ma'am?" Danny supplied somewhat crudely.

Lindsay nodded. "As first times go, it was pretty memorable, I think."

"More memorable than our first time?" Danny asked her.

Lindsay smiled. "I don't think there was any more memorable than that," she replied, satisfying his need for an ego-boost. "I surprised myself actually, being so… well, forward about the whole thing. And so uninhibited with you too."

"What? Sex on pool tables isn't part of your normal repertoire?" Danny said teasingly, his eyes twinkling with wicked amusement.

Lindsay rolled her eyes. "Hardly," she replied laughingly. "You corrupted me, Mr Messer."

"Or maybe it was just because I felt so at ease with you," she added seriously. "I suppose you and Mark are alike in that respect. You are the only man since him that I've felt that comfortable with."

Danny nodded. "So how long were the two of you together?" he enquired.

"Just over a year," Lindsay said. "We broke up – or rather he dumped me a couple of weeks into the summer semester of my second year."

Danny frowned at that, confused by the timeline. "But your Mom told me it was just before the summer break," he said. "She said you were struggling with depression all that summer."

"It's not like I go from happy to depressed instantaneously, Danny," Lindsay explained. "It builds up gradually over a period of time. We split at the beginning of that semester and I was pretty miserable, but I coped with it. And then something happened in the last couple of weeks that pushed me into meltdown."

"So why'd you split?" Danny asked.

Lindsay looked down at the table and heaved in a shaky breath. "I had a nightmare," she told him.

Danny shook his head in disbelief. "I'm sorry – what?" he said incredulously.

"I hadn't lied to him about what had happened to me," Lindsay explained. "I told him about it after we'd been dating a couple of months, but I didn't go into much detail. I explained what had happened, and that I was trying to move on from it, and he accepted that. We were eighteen, in love, and enjoying the freedom of living away from home for the first time. It wasn't an issue for us. I hadn't had a nightmare the entire time we'd been dating. I was happy, you see. I had a loving boyfriend, a small circle of genuine friends, and I was enjoying my studies too. I felt as if my past was finally behind me and that I was a whole person again. I know it was naïve, but it was the way I felt at the time…"

A single tear slipped down her cheek at that recollection, and it was the start of a river. Her emotions were so close to the surface, she couldn't stop herself from succumbing to them. She broke down, sobbing with the memory of an innocence re-discovered and then once again tragically lost.

Danny reacted without thought. Pushing away his now empty plate, he rose to his feet, came around to her side of the table and gathered her up in his arms. Winding her arms around his neck, she buried her face against his throat as he carried her to the slightly battered armchair nearby and sat down with her ensconced comfortably in his lap. Holding her tightly, he let her cry herself out, knowing that she needed to release those pent-up emotions in order to move on and tell him the rest of her story.

Finally her sobs died down and he could hear her trying to regulate her breathing as she struggled to get her emotions back under control. He'd noticed that she did that a lot, and realised that it was probably a relaxation technique that she'd been taught during her therapy sessions. Once she was calm, he turned his face into her hair and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Don't be," he murmured back. "Just tell me."

"I went shopping for a new outfit that day," she told him in a slightly detached tone. "And I thought I saw Dana…" Her breath hitched, but she swallowed back the sob. "I didn't – I saw Heidi, her younger sister, who was fifteen by then - the same age as Dana was when she was killed. They looked so alike. From a distance away, for a split second instant, I honestly thought it was her…"

She sighed. "I guess that's what triggered it. I stayed over at Mark's that night. We'd made love, but even that wasn't enough to keep the nightmare away. It was a pretty bad one. I was so panicked, I could barely breathe and I know it completely freaked him out. I don't think he really knew what to do. I eventually calmed down, but it was so vivid, so real that I broke down and told him everything… I was so in love, and I thought he felt the same way about me, so I didn't think twice about confiding in him. It was easier with him than it was with my family, my counsellor even. Everything that I'd kept bottled up inside for four years came pouring out of me in a torrent of emotion… and Mark…"

She closed her eyes. "He was actually pretty great at the time," she said. "Didn't say much, but he listened, held me, comforted me… we made love again and I went back to sleep feeling so free. Until that moment, I didn't realise that I needed to tell him, needed him to understand. It was a part of myself that I'd held back from him and it felt good to finally let it all out."

"He'd left by the time I woke the following morning, but I didn't think anything of it. I didn't even worry too much when he didn't call me for a couple of days. It bothered me a little, but we'd never been joined at the hip. My girlfriends were important to me too. I'd not had that for such a long time and I appreciated it as much as I did my romance with Mark."

"So he just stopped calling you?" Danny enquired.

Lindsay shook her head. "No, he wasn't that much of a jerk. He did at least break it off with me in person. I didn't see it coming though. We were happy, didn't have any problems. I mean we fought every once in a while like most couples do, but our relationship was fine until that night. The after-effects of my nightmare changed everything between us though…"

_**Twelve years before…**_

"_I… I don't understand."_

_Lindsay stared at Mark disbelievingly, unable to comprehend what he was trying to say._

_He ran his fingers agitatedly through his dark hair, spiking it in all directions. __"Look, I love you, Lindsay, I do," he told her, "But I just can't handle this. We're nineteen, in college. We're supposed to be having fun…"_

"_We do have fun!" she protested. "Just because I have nightmares every once in a while…"_

"_But it's more than that, isn't it?" Mark insisted, keeping his gaze averted. "And I just don't think I'm strong enough to deal with your problems. I thought you were just a little shy, but a couple of nights ago…the way you acted. It's not normal, Lindsay…"_

Danny let out a particularly strong expletive at that and it bolstered Lindsay's confidence more than any comforting platitude might have done.

"The conversation went on in that vein for a while," she explained, her voice stronger now as bitter resentment replaced the heartache. "How he loved me, but couldn't deal with my 'issues.'" She crooked her fingers into sarcastic quote marks. "He was too young for that, he said, wasn't ready for that level of commitment etcetera, etcetera…"

She shook her head. "I had no choice to accept it, but it broke my heart. I loved him so much and he rejected me so completely. It was like that one nightmare was all that defined me, and that everything else we'd been to each other in the past year was meaningless."

Breaking off, Lindsay turned her face into the roughened skin of Danny's throat and breathed in of his familiar cologne and musky masculine scent. "It's why I've been afraid to tell you everything," she confessed. "I loved you and I didn't want what I'd been through to taint things between us they way it did with Mark."

"You were scared I'd reject you. Judge you because you aren't always able to maintain your emotional stability?" Danny said.

Lindsay nodded, her hair tickling the underside of his chin. "I was wrong, but it's still a lot for you to take on even so."

"Maybe, but I distinctly remember making a vow of 'in sickness and in health' some time ago," Danny said. "And besides, who am I to judge anyway, I'm hardly Mr Even Keel, am I?"

Lindsay let out a watery laugh at that and pressed a light kiss to his Adam's apple. "I love you," she told him.

"I love you too," Danny replied, stroking his fingers through her hair. "So tell me what happened to push you over the edge."

Lindsay sighed. "I was devastated when me and Mark split, but it seemed he was pretty cut up about it too. Looking back, I do think he genuinely loved me; he just wasn't mature enough to handle what had happened to me. He wanted a fun, uncomplicated relationship and took the easy route when things took an unexpected turn."

"We had several mutual friends in common so we couldn't sever all links with each other. It was a little awkward at first, but we did manage to tolerate each other in their company. As the weeks went by, we even became tentative friends again. Throughout that time, neither he nor I dated anyone else, and I guess if I'm honest, I did start to believe that there might be a chance that we'd get back together. The incident at Caitlyn's birthday party put paid to that little fantasy though…"

"She'd gone a little crazy and rented out this huge house up in the mountains somewhere. Her parents weren't exactly millionaires, but she came from a fairly privileged background and I think they footed the bill as a birthday treat. I never quite understood why she chose a school in Montana rather than somewhere a bit more glamorous. I suppose it was something to do with the fact that she was one of the most down-to-earth people I've ever met. Plus, she loved the great outdoors – hiking, riding, and even a little rock-climbing too and I guess she had all of that on her doorstep in Bozeman."

She broke off then to gather her thoughts before she told him the most painful part of the story.

"You know what was really ironic?" she went on, her lips twisting into a wry grimace. "I was actually really enjoying myself that night. I'd been so down about my split with Mark, but my secret hope for a reconciliation had brightened my mood. On top of that, the party wasn't completely open house either. Caitlyn had drawn up the guest list herself, which I preferred because I wasn't too good at mixing with hoards of strangers. I didn't know everyone there, but there were enough familiar faces for me to feel relaxed and comfortable rather than out of my depth."

"I'd hardly seen Mark all evening, but I was feeling so happy and confident in myself that I figured I'd find him and ask him to dance…" She sighed. "It's totally predictable what happened next, isn't it?"

Danny kissed her forehead. "He wasn't alone, I take it?"

Lindsay sighed. "I was so horribly naïve back then. I'd witnessed a brutal crime, but I had no concept of what makes a nineteen year old guy tick. I thought he was grieving the loss of our relationship the same way as me, so it never crossed my mind that he would move on so quickly. It wasn't like he was actually doing anything wrong really, but having to witness the boy I loved in another girl's arms just broke me..."

She stopped and brushed an agitated hand across her face. "You have no idea how inadequate that made me feel. They weren't even dating. They'd hooked up for the first time that night, and they were going at it pretty good. I remember thinking that he'd never been that out of control when he was with me."

"Whoa!" Danny interrupted. "I thought you just caught them making out or something."

"Oh no, there was definite nudity and exchange of bodily fluids going on."

"Jesus Lindsay!"

Danny shook his head. He could easily imagine what a dent that had put in her self-confidence. It would have hurt any young woman in her position, but for a girl with such a fragile psyche already, the results must have been devastating.

"I don't really remember what happened then. It was all such a blur. It was like I was being sucked under and choked half to death. My heart was being ripped out again and I couldn't cope."

"You suffered another panic attack."

Lindsay nodded. "Yeah, I guess I did. I was so mortified that I'd ruined Caitlyn's birthday party, but she understood. She knew some of what I'd been through and she knew how I felt about Mark. She called Mel, and Mel drove out to pick me up. I missed the last couple of weeks of the semester, but I'd built up enough credit so it didn't affect my education. Caitlyn called me loads, but I'd shut down by then. I don't think I left my room for three weeks until Mel made me go to the doctor…"

"Linds…" Danny started to interrupt. He was a little unsure about broaching the subject of when she was so completely debilitated by her depression. He didn't feel qualified to help her with that. He wanted to understand how she'd felt, but it was a fine line to tread.

Lindsay didn't seem to hear him though, she just kept on talking. "I used to stand in front of my mirror and try to work out what was wrong with me. Mark's comment that I wasn't normal haunted me day and night. It was just like when Kelly's Mom inferred that I didn't deserve to live, that I'd be better off dead. I wanted to see what they saw with my own eyes, but I couldn't work it out. You would have thought that would have comforted me, but it didn't, it made it worse. There was no explanation, no reason, there was just this monster lurking deep inside of me that I couldn't understand or recognise."

"This is scaring you," she said then, not as oblivious to his inner thoughts and feelings as she first appeared.

"It makes me scared for you," Danny corrected. "I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm out of my depth when it comes to this level of emotional trauma." He sighed. "You don't feel like that all the time, do you?" he asked worriedly.

"No, no," Lindsay reassured him. "I felt like it then, and there has been one other time since, but now?" She shook her head. "No – this depression is nowhere near as bad as before. I guess because I know that we're both equally to blame for our split. With Mark and Simon I was made to feel like a victim again and I hated that. Crazy as it sounds, the fact that I share some responsibility for our problems makes them easier to handle."

"And things have changed a lot for me in the past eight years too," she added. "Yes, things went awry for us, but whether you know it or not, your love – and having Lucy – has made me stronger, taught me to have faith in myself and who I am. I still have my hang-ups, but coming to New York was the new life and the new start that I always dreamed of. It changed me and I have greater strength now. I feel like I'm judged for who I am rather than who I was if you can understand that."

Danny nodded. "Look, about that. This is entirely your choice, but I want you to consider something before you come home at the weekend, okay?"

"Consider what?"

"Going to see Kelly's Mom," he said.

"Why?"

"Because I think you need to. It doesn't matter how often you tell yourself that it's all forgotten, there's still some doubt left inside of your mind, isn't there? Maybe it's finally time for you to lay those fears to rest. I think you'd feel so much better if you did."

"What happens if she doesn't want to see me?" Lindsay asked a little fearfully.

"You think I'd be suggesting this if I hadn't already checked that out?" Danny told her. "Just do me a favour and don't go alone, all right? Take your Mom – or some other member of your family - with you."

"So are you suggesting that I find Mark and confront him too?" Lindsay asked then.

Danny shook his head. "God no, that's an entirely different thing. Plus, I don't want him anywhere near you."

"Why?"

"Because your sister was right in what she said to me the other day. She told me Mark was just young and immature, and hurt you unthinkingly. From what you've just told me, I think that's true. I would say he's probably ashamed of the way he treated you now."

"So what? You think he'd apologise, I'd forgive him and fall in love with him all over again?"

"It's not beyond the realms of possibility."

"Except that I love you far more than I ever loved him," Lindsay said, cupping his face between her palms and kissing him fondly. "You don't have anything to worry about," she said when their lips parted.

"I didn't say I was worried," Danny protested mildly.

Lindsay smiled. "You didn't need to," she replied and then kissed him again for good measure.

"I'll think about it," she told him when she released him a second time.

Danny nodded. "Good," he said and then smiled. "I guess that's hurdle number two conquered, huh?"

"Only about five hundred more to go," Lindsay commented dryly.

Danny laughed. "I don't think there's quite that many," he said, cuddling her close.

"I'm sorry if I freaked you out," she said, tucking her head under his chin.

"It's okay. I just… I need you to promise me that you'll speak up if you ever feel like that again, all right?"

"What? So you can have me sectioned?" she quipped.

"No, so I can make sure you get the appropriate help," he returned sharply. "It's not a joke, Lindsay," he reprimanded her.

She sighed. "I know, believe me I know. It would take a lot to put me back there though, Danny. I reacted so badly to my break-up with Mark because it crushed my hope. I thought I could reinvent myself, get away from my past, but what happened with him proved that I couldn't. It was a hard thing for me to accept at the time, but I did eventually accept it. It wasn't all plain sailing from then on, but I stopped trying to run away from it after that."

She heaved out a tired sigh. "Can we leave all that for another time though, Danny?" she pleaded. "I'm about done for tonight."

He kissed the top of her head. "Sure," he agreed easily.

She lifted her head to look up into his face. "Can I sleep here tonight?" she asked him.

"Lindsay…"

"Just sleep, nothing else," she quickly assured him. "I just need someone to hold me. I need _you_ to hold me."

Danny considered. He didn't want this to become a habit before they were ready for it, but he couldn't deny her tonight. She wanted reassurance. Thinking about the way Mark had rejected her had set off a chain reaction with him. If he let her stay tonight, it would be proof of his acceptance and she desperately needed that right now.

"Okay," he agreed. "But call your Mom first so she doesn't wonder where you are."

Lindsay smiled at that. "I have to get her permission before I sleep over at my boyfriend's, huh?" she said.

Danny laughed. "I don't want your Dad turning up with a shot-gun," he joked.

Lindsay giggled and then leaned her forehead affectionately against his. "Thank-you," she whispered. "You have no idea how much this means to me."

Bridging the gap between them, he kissed her, rubbing the back of his thumb up and down her spine as his mouth moved tenderly over hers. "Don't sweat it," he told her. "I love you, okay?"

She smiled wistfully, thinking how long she'd been waiting to hear those words from him again. He'd told her a couple of times in the last few days, but not as directly as this. It was a turning point and it filled her with renewed hope.

"I love you too," she told him, before they gave into temptation once more and kissed again.

_**To be continued…**_


	17. Separation Anxiety

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi all! Another new chapter for you. Hope you enjoy. Oh and by the way, Danny and Lindsay are a litle bit naughty in the last scene - just a warning! -)

**OOOOOO**

_**Part **__**17 – Separation Anxiety **_

_**11 **__**AM**__**, the following day…**_

"No, no, Daddy. Don't go! Don't go!"

Danny closed his eyes and prayed to the Lord to give him strength as Lucy clung to him like a limpet, her little legs locked firmly around his waist and her arms wound tightly around his neck. While mostly recovered now, her illness had made her uncharacteristically obstreperous. She'd been all sweetness and light only a few minutes before, but had proceeded to kick up an almighty fuss once it became apparent that it was time for him to leave.

"Now come on," he gently chided her. "Quit being so silly. It's only for a little while - you'll see me again in a few days time, I promise."

"B-b-but w-why c-c-can't y-you s-stay h-here?" Lucy demanded tearfully. "Y-you could c-come h-home with m-me and Mommy."

"Daddy has to work, sweetie."

"U-uncle F-Flack could do it."

Danny rolled his eyes derisively at that. "Uncle Flack would probably blow up the Lab," he remarked wryly. "I don't think he knows one end of a test tube from the other."

Hearing his wife's soft giggle, he shot her a pleading look. "A little help here might be nice, darlin'" he remarked pointedly.

Lindsay's smile widened. "But you're handling it so well, babe," she returned, artlessly batting her eyelashes at him.

Danny had to bite back his initial response – it wasn't fit for their little drama queen's innocent ears. "Lindsay…" he protested in a low, warning growl instead.

As much as Lindsay was enjoying the spectacle, she eventually decided that she ought to take pity on him, knowing that if Lucy's behaviour was allowed to continue, it would escalate into a tantrum of epic proportions. And Lindsay knew her daughter - although she genuinely did not want her father to leave, there were a fair few crocodile tears mixed in with the more bona fide symptoms of distress. Lucy had gotten used to having them both at her constant beck and call in the last couple of days, and she wasn't ready to give that up yet. Reality was going to have to intrude sooner or later however, so the quicker their little girl accepted that the better.

"Now listen," she said, placing a calming hand against Lucy's back as the little girl clung resolutely to her father, her arms like tiny bands of steel around his neck. "Daddy has to go to work like he promised Uncle Mac he would, and you and I have to stay here like we promised Gram and Gramps we would. And we don't break promises to the people that we care about, do we?"

Lifting her head from her father's shoulder, Lucy's lips set into a mutinous pout. "Uncle Mac wouldn't mind," she declared.

"Yes, Uncle Mac would," her mother returned, her tone brooking no argument. "Now Daddy will call you every day, and you'll see him again at the weekend. He'll come and pick us up from the airport too - won't you Daddy?" She looked at her husband for confirmation.

Danny nodded. "Sure thing," he agreed. "I'll be there waiting at the gate, I promise."

"With a present?" Lucy asked, her tears drying up in an instant.

Danny exchanged a look with Lindsay, who raised her eyebrows. "She's your daughter," she reminded him.

"I don't appreciate the insinuation in that," he told her acerbically, and then turned his attention back to Lucy. "You can have a present," he said, "But only if you're a good girl and stop all this fuss."

"Okay." His daughter nodded, finally loosening her hold on his neck and wriggling to be put down. "I'll go and get your coat," she announced brightly, and then vanished back inside the house leaving the pitter-patter sound of small feet echoing in her wake.

"One minute she doesn't want me to leave, and the next she can't wait to see the back of me," Danny commented dryly to Lindsay. "I'm not sure which I prefer to be honest."

"Bribery always comes with strings attached," she told him sanctimoniously.

"Gets results though," Danny said with a grin.

Their eyes met in a moment of shared amusement, and, all of a sudden, Lindsay knew exactly how Lucy had felt. She wanted to hold on tight and never let go too. "Thank you," she whispered, her unpredictable emotions teetering on the edge.

"For what?"

"For coming here, for giving us a second chance, for… for…" her voice faltered and she had to blink back the tears.

"Hey! Come on, come here," Danny soothed, drawing her into a comforting hug.

Wrapping her arms tightly around his back, Lindsay buried her face against his collarbone as he tenderly stroked her hair and pressed a warm kiss to the side of her neck.

"I came here because I wanted to," he told her. "Mac helped me to realise that I wasn't doing myself - or you - any favours by procrastinating over the situation. We needed to figure out where we stood so we could move on."

Lindsay lifted her head from his shoulder to look up into his face. "So what happens now?" she asked.

"We have a few days to let things settle in our minds," Danny replied. "And then I guess the tough part begins. I don't really know how that's going to work yet, but we'll figure it out once you get home."

He glanced at his watch. "I'm sorry, babe – I really wish we could talk some more, but I need to get going or I'm gonna miss my flight."

Stepping back, he rubbed his hands up and down her arms in an encouraging gesture. "Just remember what we talked about last night, yeah?"

Lindsay nodded, apprehension stirring low in her belly as she recalled the previous evening's conversation and the somewhat reluctant pledge that she'd made about going to see Kelly's Mom before she left Montana.

"It'll be okay," he assured her, and then wrapped the palm of his hand around the nape of her neck and drew her close again, this time for a heartfelt kiss rather than a reassuring hug.

Surrendering wholeheartedly to the moment, Lindsay whimpered in the back of her throat as desire flamed hotly in her veins. Coiling her arms around his waist, she brazenly slid her hands into the back pocket of his jeans as their kiss deepened. Threading his fingers through her hair, Danny responded in kind, his tongue tangling with hers as their embrace grew ever more intense.

In the end, it was Danny who broke their steamy kiss, forcibly dragging his lips from hers with a low, frustrated groan. "Jesus!" he exclaimed, burying his face against her neck in an attempt to calm the arousal stirring up his blood like a hornet's nest.

He knew they'd made the right decision to abstain from physical intimacy for the time being, but with every step that they made towards reconciliation, the greater his want for her became. Waiting was going to be a bitch, but he'd done it before and he would do it again. Raising his head, he started to pull back from her… and then immediately froze at the sight that greeted him.

Lucy was standing a short distance away, his leather jacket clutched in her small hands and trailing on the wooden decking at her feet. Her sapphire eyes were big and round and her bow-like mouth was shaped into a wide 'O'.

"What's the matter?" Lindsay asked as she felt him stiffen in her arms. Drawing away, she turned to see what had distracted him. "Oh," she said ineffectually when she realised.

"Daddy! You were kissing Mommy!" Lucy exclaimed when she eventually found her voice.

"Err… yeah," Danny agreed uncomfortably, feeling like school-boy caught in the act of looking up a little girl's skirt. It wasn't as if he'd hidden his relationship with Rachel from his daughter, but he was pretty sure that she hadn't witnessed anything quite so full-on before.

"Is Mommy your girlfriend now as well as Rachel?" Lucy asked with typical four year old innocence.

Even though she knew it was highly inappropriate under the circumstances, Lindsay dissolved into giggles at that. She buried her face against Danny's shoulder in an attempt to smother her laughter. "You're on your own there," she murmured.

"Thanks," he responded in low tones and then pulled away from her to kneel down in front of their curious daughter. "No honey – Rachel and I… we're not girlfriend and boyfriend anymore."

"Why not?" Lucy asked; her blue eyes wide and inquisitive. "Did you have a fight?"

"No," Danny shook his head in denial. "We just decided that we didn't want to be together in that way anymore."

"'Cus you still like Mommy?" Lucy enquired.

Danny threw a quick glance over his shoulder at Lindsay before answering his daughter's question. "I guess that had something to do with it, yeah," he admitted.

Lucy's expression instantly brightened at that. "So, you're not getting a 'vorce?" she demanded eagerly. "You're coming home to live with me and Mommy?"

Any amusement Lindsay had found in the situation died an immediate death at that. She and Danny had been so wrapped up in trying to patch up their shattered marriage; they'd not fully considered the effect their decision would have on their daughter. How were they supposed to explain this to her? They couldn't give her any solid promises, not yet, and at only four years old, she couldn't be expected to understand the complexities of adult relationships. To her, everything was black and white – you either loved someone or you didn't, there were no shades of grey in between.

Letting out a resigned sigh, Danny hooked his hands under Lucy's arms and picked her up. Turning around, he sat down on the porch step and settled her on his knee while Lindsay took a seat beside them. After reaching over to push a lock of their daughter's honey-blonde hair away from her cherubim face, Lindsay took one of their little girl's small hands in hers and squeezed it lightly.

"Listen sweetie," she began hesitantly. "Your Daddy and me, we realised not so long ago that we missed each other a whole lot. We want us all to be together as a family again, but we need to make absolutely sure that's the right thing first. We don't want things to go back to the way they were before."

"You used to fight a lot," Lucy said. "I didn't like it when you shouted."

"I know you didn't, baby. And you know what? Neither did me and Daddy. It made us sad too. That's why we decided that maybe it would be better if we didn't live together anymore."

"But you're friends again now," Lucy pointed out.

"Yes, yes, we are," Lindsay agreed, "And we want it to stay that way. Don't we, Daddy?" she added, appealing to Danny for support.

He nodded. "Yes, we do," he said, and then leaned in to press a tender kiss to their little girl's temple. "That's the most important thing," he told her. "It's okay to get angry at each other every once in a while - everyone does that - but when it happens too often, that's not a good thing. Mommy and I need to do lots of talking so we can make sure that doesn't happen again, all right?"

Lucy's head bobbed in agreement. "'kay."

"So Daddy isn't going to be coming home right now, okay?"

"But you will soon?" Lucy asked hopefully.

Danny shot Lindsay a helpless look, his heart sinking inside of his chest. Even though that's what they'd pledged to work towards, he didn't want to make any guarantees to their daughter. It could break their little girl's vibrant spirit if they promised her something and then failed to deliver.

He sighed. "I don't know the answer to that right now, pumpkin," he answered truthfully. "Me and Mommy are going to try our very best, but we don't know whether we can make it work yet. We're just going to be boyfriend and girlfriend for a while and see how that goes. If we decide that we want to be married again, you'll be the first to know, I promise."

"So if you're boyfriend and girlfriend you just kiss lots and have sleepovers? And if you're married, you live in the same 'partment?" Lucy enquired, her brow furrowing as she tried to fathom out the confusing intricacies of grown-up relationships.

Grabbing hold of the conveniently offered loop-hole, both her parents nodded vigorously in agreement. "That's the way it is for Daddy and me, yes," Lindsay concurred.

"But listen, sweetheart…" She cupped her little girl's face in her hands. "Whatever happens – if Daddy comes home or not – he and I love you very much and that is never ever going to change, okay?"

"Okay," Lucy said, reaching out her arms for a hug and a kiss. "I love you too, Mommy," she said as Lindsay cuddled her close.

"Hey! What about me?" Danny protested mildly, relieved that Lucy seemed to have accepted what they were telling her for the present. Only time would tell if she really understood however.

"Well, I don't know," Lindsay said teasingly to her daughter. "Do we love Daddy? He _is_ a boy after all, and they smell you know."

She wrinkled her nose in faux disgust and Lucy giggled.

"Daddy has showers so he's not very stinky," she declared.

"Watch it, Little Miss Cheeky," Danny growled playfully. Rising to his feet, he effortlessly plucked her out of Lindsay's arms and tipped her upside-down, holding her by her ankles. "Take it back," he demanded.

"No, put me down, Daddy! Put me down!" Lucy squealed in delight and then let out a stream of childish giggles when he proceeded to use her as a free weight to exercise his arm muscles.

"Danny," Lindsay chided. "You'll make her sick."

"Mommy's no fun," Danny grumbled to his daughter, but relented nonetheless. Mindful of her recent illness, he carefully set the little girl upright once more.

Lucy immediately wrapped her arms tightly around his legs. "I love you, Daddy," she said. "I promise, I do."

"Well, I should think so too," he said, bending down to pick her up for another hug as the back door creaked open and Elizabeth and Jack stepped out onto the veranda. He kissed her soundly. "I love you, baby girl," he declared, "But Daddy really needs to get going now."

Setting her back down on her feet, he approached Lindsay's parents to take his leave. "Jack," he said succinctly, shaking his father-in-law's hand before turning towards his waiting mother-in-law.

Elizabeth held out her arms to him and he willingly stepped into them. "Thank-you for everything," he murmured to her as he hugged her close. "We owe you so much."

"You're welcome, honey," Elizabeth said in return. She rubbed her hand up-and-down his back and turned her head to lightly kiss his cheek. "Take care of my girls, okay? And come back for a visit soon," she added as she stepped back.

Danny nodded at her with a smile and then squatted down in front of Lucy again. "Big kiss," he said, opening his arms wide to her.

With a child's natural exuberance, Lucy flung her arms around his neck and planted a smacker of a kiss on his lips. "Bye Daddy."

"Bye sweetie." He buzzed his lips against her neck, making her giggle, and then straightened up and turned to his wife.

Cupping the back of her head in his palm, he tugged her close for another – this time relatively chaste – kiss. "I'll call you," he promised when their lips parted.

Lindsay nodded, biting her bottom lip to hold back the emotions threatening to rise and spill as Danny tenderly stroked the backs of his fingers over her cheek. "I love you," she said, her voice breaking a little over the words.

"I love you too," Danny returned, and then leaned in to kiss her one last time. Lindsay's hands rose to encircle his wrists as their lips clung for the space of several heartbeats before he reluctantly released her from his grasp and turned resolutely for his rental car.

Her emotions veering wildly from heady euphoria to fearful despondency, Lindsay stood forlornly at the railing and watched until the car turned the corner at the end of the drive and disappeared from view. Drawing in and releasing a shaky breath, she then turned and fled back into the house, her breath hitching over a choked-back sob.

Elizabeth exchanged a significant look with her husband and then smiled at Lucy, who thankfully appeared to be oblivious to her mother's distress. "Now, my little darling," she said, her voice vibrant with affection. "How about Gramps takes you to the playground in town for a bit, while I see about organising us some lunch, huh? How does cheese and tomato cannelloni sound?"

"Yummy!" Lucy beamed, rubbing her stomach for emphasis. "Come on, Gramps," she said, sliding her tiny hand into her grandfather's large, roughly callused one and tugging on it insistently. "Let's go!"

"Can we see if Hannah wants to come too?" Elizabeth heard her grand-daughter ask as she and Jack headed across the yard towards the Jeep.

Satisfied that Lucy was suitably distracted, Elizabeth turned back for the house and went in search of her troubled daughter. She found Lindsay curled up on top of her bed, silent tears coursing down her cheeks as she tried to contain the unwanted emotions that were filling her fragile heart with unreasoning fear.

"Talk to me, sweetheart," Elizabeth said, sitting down on the edge of the mattress and reaching out to stroke her daughter's hair back from her tear-streaked face.

"Oh Mom!"

Sitting up, Lindsay threw herself into her mother's waiting arms and began to sob in earnest. Shushing and holding her tightly, Elizabeth let her cry herself out until she was finally able to talk coherently about what was troubling her.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Lindsay brokenly apologised, swiping at the tears on her cheeks as she struggled to get her emotions back under control. "I just… I didn't want him to leave."

"It's only for a few days," Elizabeth reminded her soothingly.

"I know but…" Lindsay lifted her gaze to her mother's face, her coffee-coloured eyes overflowing with a myriad of conflicting emotions.

"But what?" Elizabeth softly pressed.

"What if he changes his mind, Mom?" Lindsay burst out in a rush. "What if when he gets back to New York, he decides this isn't worth it? Decides I'm not worth it?"

"And what possible reason would there be for him to do that?" Elizabeth replied calmly.

"I don't know!" Lindsay said, wringing her hands in distressed agitation. "It's just that this feels so unreal, Mom. Montana isn't our reality; New York is. It might seem like we have a chance of making it when we're away from our normal lives, but what if, when we're back home, all that changes again?"

"Now you're just being silly," Elizabeth gently but firmly admonished. "You needed this break to properly talk and make a decision about whether you wanted to stay together or remain apart. That's what Danny came here for, isn't it? This wasn't a vacation by any stretch of the imagination. This was make-or-break time for you both."

"I know but…"

"But nothing," Elizabeth cut off her daughter's feeble protest. "Danny is a good man and a good father, Lindsay. Not perfect but he's not a monster. Do you honestly think that he would have made such a commitment to you – and to Lucy as well – if he didn't mean it? A little geographical distance is not going to make a blind bit of difference. You need to learn to have a little more faith and belief in him _and_ yourself."

Lindsay bowed her head in shame. "I know that, Mom, I do. I just …" She shrugged helplessly, unable to articulate why she felt the way she did.

Elizabeth sighed. "Have you been taking your medication?" she asked directly.

"Mom…" Lindsay protested, a little taken aback at the question.

"Answer me, Lindsay. I need to know the truth."

"Yes! I've been taking my medication, okay? But the pills don't automatically make everything better, Mom, you _know_ that."

"Yes, I know," Elizabeth replied, "But I've seen you through several bouts of depression now and I recognise the signs. Your emotions have been going from one extreme to the other within the space of a few hours. You were happy and confident this morning when you and Danny came up to the house for breakfast, and now, just a few hours later, you're sobbing on your bed, afraid that he's going to change his mind. I know this is a difficult and emotional time for you both, but that kind of see-sawing is just not healthy, honey. Maybe the dosage you're on isn't strong enough…"

"Mom please…"

"I know you hate relying on medication, but whether you like it or not, it does help. All I'm suggesting is that you make an appointment with your doctor when you get back to New York; explain the situation you're in and how you've been feeling, and let her decide on the appropriate treatment. You want to give your marriage the greatest chance of success, don't you?"

"Of course I do."

"You need to make sure you take proper care of yourself then. Danny's on a learning curve with this right now, so he won't always be able to recognise when things are becoming too much for you. I think in your heart _you_ know when that is though – you just have to find the courage to ask for help when you need it, and not let things get beyond the point of no return. You allow yourself to cross that line and all bets are off. Don't let your depression steal away your future, Lindsay. That's giving it a power it doesn't deserve."

She was loath to admit it, but Lindsay knew her Mom was right. Even though it was hard for her to see when she was right in the middle of it, she did know when she was at breaking point. She'd known it that day before the fire. Usually she had the strength to resist, but when she started to give into the melancholy that was the time to seek help.

Would she have asked for it if the fire had never happened though? The truth was, she didn't know. She hoped she would have done so for Lucy's sake, but there was still some doubt in the back of her mind about that. It didn't matter now anyway, they were where they were and the only way was forward.

"Okay, I'll make an appointment when I get back home," she reluctantly agreed.

In response, her mother reached over and picked up the cell phone on the nightstand. "Do it now," she instructed, handing it to her. "Give me some peace of mind."

"You're going to check up on me to make sure I go too, aren't you?" Lindsay said with a faint smile, as she thumbed through her address book and located the number of her doctor's office.

Her mother nodded. "I'm going to call Danny so that he ensures you keep the appointment," she freely admitted.

"Mom…"

Elizabeth cut her off. "He needs to know, Lindsay," she rebutted. "And I'm not going to apologise for being an over-protective mother over this either. I wouldn't be doing my job right if I ignored it."

Lindsay sighed. "I know, Mom, and I love you for it even if it is downright irritating sometimes. Plus, I kind of promised Danny last night that I would tell him if things were getting too much for me. It was in a different context to this, but I guess it amounts to the same thing…"

"Hello?" she broke off as the receptionist picked up on the other end of the line. "This is Lindsay Messer; I'm one of Doctor Quinn's patients? I'd like to make an appointment to see her sometime next week if that's possible?"

She waited as the receptionist looked up the details on the computer and then offered her a potential appointment time. "Umm Tuesday at 9 AM?" she mused, trying to remember next week's shift pattern.

She was pretty certain she was on a twelve till eight that day – Tuesday's were one of Danny's nights in the week for having Lucy so she often took the later shift. They worked a fairly flexible custody arrangement, given their jobs, so the days occasionally ended up being switched. She was fairly confident that wasn't the case this week though. She would have to find a baby-sitter for Lucy, but could take her along if that ended up being a major problem…

"Yes okay, that sounds fine," she eventually agreed. "Thank-you. Yes… Goodbye."

She ended the call and looked expectantly at her mother. "Satisfied?" she asked, only a slight hint of bite in her tone. She couldn't really be mad at her Mom for her interference, not when it was motivated by such unconditional love. She'd be the same with Lucy, she knew.

Elizabeth nodded. "It's a start," she accepted. "Now come and help me with lunch – I promised your daughter cheese and tomato cannelloni."

"You could give her PB&J and she'd still be happy," Lindsay said as she followed her mother down the hallway to the top of the staircase.

"Yes, but I have Nana Messer to compete with when it comes to Italian dishes, don't I? Somehow I think I may be outclassed there."

Lindsay laughed. "It's not a competition, Mom. Lucy adores you both. I know Danny's parents get to see her a bit more than you do, but it isn't that often, especially not since Danny and I split. I know he takes her to visit with them, but, reading between the lines, I think there's some tension there at the moment. His Mom is very traditional – I guess the idea of divorce doesn't sit too well with her – and she can be very vocal with her opinions as well. Danny loves her to death, but I imagine it can be a bit wearing on him sometimes." She shrugged as they reached the bottom of the stairs. "Another thing I'm inadvertently responsible for, I guess."

Elizabeth curled her arm around her daughter's shoulders as they went through into the kitchen. "Now listen, don't you go feeling guilty about that, okay? You and Danny need to be a little bit selfish right now and concentrate on yourselves for once. You don't need to be worrying about the in-laws. Families are remarkably forgiving when push comes to shove so I'm sure it'll work itself out in time."

Lindsay nodded. "We can hope," she said with a slight smile and then forcibly set those concerns aside. "So – what do you want me to do?" she asked.

Around fifteen minutes later, as she sat at the kitchen table chopping up various fresh herbs to go into the tomato sauce, Lindsay glanced across at her mother and broached the subject of the other promise she'd made to Danny last night.

"Mom?" she asked hesitantly, her stomach jumping with apprehension. Once the words were out, she wouldn't be able to take them back.

"Mmm?" Elizabeth said somewhat absently, as she tipped a bowl of halved cherry tomatoes into a pan sizzling with olive oil.

Covering it with a lid, she continued to cook them over a high heat, regularly shaking the pan to keep them from sticking to the sides. The pasta sheets for the cannelloni had already been spread with a mixture of cream cheese and pesto, topped with sliced tomatoes and then rolled up to encase the filling. They were currently laid out on the counter-top, ready and waiting to go into the large lasagne dish once the sauce was completed.

"There was something else me and Danny talked about last night," Lindsay continued, her voice wavering slightly, which immediately drew her mother's diverted attention back to her.

"And what was that?" Elizabeth responded mildly, guessing what was coming given what Jack had told her about his conversation with Danny a couple of days before.

"He thinks that I should… umm… that I should make my peace with Kelly's Mom."

Elizabeth nodded. "I think Susan would appreciate that," she said.

"She would?" Lindsay sounded somewhat sceptical.

"Honey – she's regretted what happened at the funeral for a very long time now," Elizabeth explained as she held out her hand for the bowl of herbs to add to the sauce.

"I wouldn't say we're the close friends we used to be," she went on, "We both feel too guilty. Her for what she said to you that day, and me because I'm fortunate enough to witness my daughter grow up, get married and start a family of her own while she's been denied that pleasure. It's not as if we don't talk though, and we still socialise as part of a group."

Removing the sauce from the stove, she ladled half of it into the prepared dish and then began to arrange the pasta rolls on top. "Are you sure you're ready for this though, Lindsay?" she asked as she worked. "Or are you just doing it to please Danny?"

"No, I…" Lindsay broke off and scrubbed her hand over her face. "He's right, you know? I tell myself I understand and part of me does, especially since I became a mother myself. But another part of me still thinks I deserve what she said."

Elizabeth sighed. "I wish I'd pushed harder at the time for you to speak to her. You were so on edge though and we were worried it would make the situation worse."

"I don't know whether I would have heard her at the time anyway," Lindsay said. "To be honest, she only confirmed what I was already feeling inside. Plus, it's not like all my problems are tied into that one single event. They're not - there are so many other things that have contributed to how I am."

"So you're sure you want to do this?" Elizabeth repeated.

"Sure might be overstating it a little," Lindsay replied. "But I don't want it hanging over my head anymore."

Elizabeth nodded. "Maybe the trick is not to make a huge deal of it," she said. "There's a charity bake sale at the community centre on Friday. Susan will be there. Why don't you come along to help out and bring Lucy with you?"

Lindsay let out a nervous titter at that. "And that's not making a huge deal out of it?" she said, "When the whole town will be there to witness it?"

Elizabeth sighed. "Lindsay – I know what it was like for you back then, but it's been sixteen years now. People have moved on. I'm not saying that there aren't going to be those who are curious, but you're not going to be the centre of attention that you think you are. You've built up your perceived notoriety in your head to be a whole lot more than it actually is."

"Kind of egotistical of me, I suppose?"

"No - understandable when you've spent over a decade avoiding being part of the community," her mother replied. "Now, if you really wanted to cause a stir, you should have done this while Danny was still here and brought him along too."

"What?" Lindsay said laughingly.

Elizabeth smiled. "He's something of a novelty around these parts, you know. A real life New Yorker, no less."

"Yeah, because this is like the back of beyond," Lindsay said with a roll of her eyes.

"No, but there are still quite a few people living here who have never been further than the Montana state borders," Elizabeth told her. "Plus, it's an added bonus that he sounds so much the part. That accent is definitely the jewel in your husband's crown."

"Yeah and he knows it," Lindsay said irreverently.

Elizabeth grinned. "You mean he knows how to use it to maximum effect with you, you mean," she said knowingly.

Lindsay blushed. "I guess we play on it a bit," she admitted. "The country girl, city boy theme, I mean."

"There's nothing wrong with that. It's part of what attracted you to each other in the first place and it's a good mechanism for keeping that chemistry alive. It's a bit like me and your Dad with Grandpa and his shot-gun. Forty years on and we still tease each other with it."

"The innocent girl corrupted by the town bad boy," Lindsay said with a smile. She'd lost track of how often she'd been told the story of her parents' rather unconventional romance.

Elizabeth laughed. "Honey, I wasn't even remotely innocent. I knew what I wanted and I went after it relentlessly. Your Dad didn't stand a chance and he wasn't such a bad boy either. He'd gotten into trouble a couple of times, but they were hardly major misdemeanours, just silly teenage pranks. He was the other half of my whole and I knew it - even at seventeen. It took him a little while to catch up with me, but when he did, he was just as determined as me that we should be together."

"I still can't quite believe you eloped though."

"Honey, we were eighteen, in love, it was an adventure. Our parents may have been appalled, but I don't regret it and we proved them wrong in the end, didn't we? They mellowed quickly enough after the birth of their first grandchild anyway. Brian was a pretty effective peacemaker with those chubby cheeks, even temperament and cute-as-a-button smiles."

"Good job Mel wasn't your first-born, huh?" Lindsay quipped with a mischievous smile.

Elizabeth chuckled as she recalled her eldest daughter's rather more trying first few years. Placid, Melinda definitely wasn't. While Brian had been happy to lie in his pram and watch the leaves on the trees flutter in the wind, Mel had demanded almost constant entertainment and had voiced her displeasure at the top of her lungs if she didn't get it. She claimed it had been a sign of her superior intelligence, but Elizabeth rather felt it was because she was a carbon copy of her father and was therefore as stubborn as a mule.

"So, will you come on Friday?" she asked Lindsay, returning to their previous topic of conversation as she slid the baking dish into the hot oven. "Or do you want me to call Susan and arrange something else?"

Lindsay shook her head. "No, I'll come. Better late than never, huh?"

Elizabeth gently smoothed her hand over her youngest daughter's hair and bent to kiss the top of her head. "It'll be fine," she assured her, saying it with such conviction that for that brief moment in time, Lindsay actually believed it.

**OOOOOO**

_**Later that night…**_

Emerging from the bathroom after indulging in a long, hot bubble bath, Lindsay padded barefoot down the hallway back to her room, feeling more relaxed than she had done in some time. Her muscles felt supple and limber rather than stiff and tense, and her mind was clear and thankfully free of soul-destroying thoughts.

As she entered her bedroom, the cell phone on her nightstand began to sound and she moved quickly to pick it up, conscious that her parents were probably already in bed. She smiled as she saw Danny's grinning face on the display. He'd called earlier to say goodnight to Lucy, but there hadn't been time for any adult conversation because he was heading out the door for his shift.

"Hey!" she said, sitting down on the edge of her bed and bringing the cell to her ear.

"Your family are stalking me," Danny told her by way of greeting.

She smiled at the teasing note of complaint in his voice. "My Mom called you already, huh?" she guessed.

"Yeah," Danny replied. "Is she right?" he asked after a beat, his tone serious now.

"That I need to go to the doctor, you mean?" Lindsay said.

"Yes."

"I err… I guess I'm a bit more up-and-down emotionally than I probably should be," she confessed.

Danny sighed. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For pushing you too far with this."

Lindsay shook her head even though he couldn't see her. "You're not, Danny. This is what I want, okay? Given the way things are with me right now, I'm probably going to need a bit more help to get through it than I might have done otherwise, but that's just the way it is. In the end, it'll be worth it, I know it will."

"All right," Danny said. "But you're keeping that appointment, okay?"

"Between you and my Mom I'm not going to have much choice, am I?" Lindsay replied somewhat acidly.

"No, but that's only because we care," Danny scolded her.

She sighed. "I know, I know. I just… I guess I feel like I'm being backed into a corner that I can't get out of, that's all. I _want_ to get better, but the depression has a pretty strong pull on me sometimes."

"So grab hold of those helping hands when they're offered, Linds," Danny told her quietly.

"I'm trying, I promise," she assured him.

"Well, good," he said with satisfaction. "So whatcha doin'?" he asked then, deliberately switching their conversation to a lighter topic.

"Me? Umm… well, I've just finished taking a bubble bath…"

Danny groaned. "Jesus Montana, you can't tell me stuff like that when I'm at the Lab. You. Naked. Bubbles. _Way_ too distracting."

She giggled. "So, you don't want to know about the all-over body moisturiser I was about to apply then?" she said, surprising herself slightly with her boldness.

It had been a long time since they'd teased each other like this, but her Mom's words had struck a chord that morning with her comment about how they should use what had attracted them to each other in the first place to keep the chemistry between them alive. They'd gotten complacent over the years, had stood back and expected it to happen rather than taken the time to nurture what they had together. They needed to fall in love all over again, and maybe going back to the beginning was the best place to start.

Not that she'd flirted with him quite so overtly when they'd first made that personal connection but still…

"Danny?" she questioned when the only response she got was silence.

"Sorry, just taking a little personal time to absorb the image," he said, his voice a little strained.

She smiled. "Where are you?" she asked.

"Shouldn't that be 'what are you wearing'?" he quipped.

She laughed. "I mean it, Danny."

"In the AV Lab, waiting for Adam to show up with the security tape we gotta analyse."

"Ahh – so no time for phone sex then," she said, allowing her voice to drop in disappointment.

"You're just determined to torture me, aren't you?" Danny complained. "I impose a sex ban and you immediately test out its limits."

"You have an overactive imagination, Messer," she drawled.

"Yeah and you're a wicked woman, Miss Butter-wouldn't-Melt."

"Isn't that why you married me?" she asked archly.

He chuckled. "Yeah, that's why I married you," he agreed. "Along with the fact that I loved you."

"Not to mention the fact that I was knocked up," she said, comfortable enough to mention it now that Danny hadn't.

There was a momentary pause. "That was an added bonus," was his eventual reply.

"Even if it did turn out to be a girl," she joked, trying to ease the slight tension that had entered their conversation.

Danny laughed. "You're never going to let me forget that, are you?" he said.

"You were disappointed at the time."

"No, no, I was shocked. I was totally convinced it was a boy."

"But you got a Daddy's girl instead."

"And I've never looked back..." he said and then broke off. "Oh, hey Adam… Look babe, I've got to go, I'll call you tomorrow, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, say hi to Adam for me."

"_Lindsay says 'Hi!'"_

"_Yo! Country Girl!"_

"You get that?"

"Yeah, I love you."

"Love you too. Sweet dreams, huh?"

"Hopefully."

"Just think of me…"

"What? Massaging in that moisturiser for me?" she suggested playfully, and then giggled in delight when he promptly cut her off without another word.

"Gotcha cowboy," she murmured to herself as she lay back against the mattress. "Hope you're ready for round two..."

_**To be continued…**_


	18. Lost and Found

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi! Sorry for the lack of an update last weekend. Real life interferences, plus a nasty cold conspired against me :-(

Anyway, I'm back now and I hope this chapter makes up for the wait. I thought we'd take a little bit more of a look-see at how Danny reacted when he and Lindsay split, as well events at a certain bake-sale in Montana…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part **__**18 – Lost and Found**_

_**New York, two days later…**_

"Hey! Earth to Messer!"

"W-what?"

Danny jumped as Flack waved a hand directly in front of his face. He looked up, blinking rapidly as he recovered his focus. "Oh, you finally ready?" he enquired as he bent to retrieve his gym bag from the floor. "What took you so long? You need to fix your make-up or somethin'?"

"Hilarious, Messer, hilarious," Flack returned, deadpan, as he plopped himself down in a chair at the apartment's kitchen table.

"I thought we were going to shoot some hoops?" Danny asked when it looked like his friend was settling in for a long stretch.

"We are," Flack said, "But you're so distracted right now, I'm afraid I'm going to grind you into the dirt even more than usual."

Taking refuge in male bravado, Danny sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. "In your dreams, Donnie boy, in your dreams," he declared, eyeing his colleague with barely concealed contempt.

Although severely tempted to retaliate, Flack magnanimously waved the friendly abuse aside. "Seriously though, buddy," he said. "What's up with you? You've been on another planet since you got here."

Danny sighed, nervously chewing on his bottom lip. "I have something of a dilemma," he admitted.

"Go on," Flack said, his words accompanied by an encouraging hand gesture.

"Well, you know me and Linds have decided to give things another go?" Danny said.

Flack nodded. "That's a good thing, right?" he enquired with a slight frown.

"Yeah, yeah, it's a good thing," Danny readily concurred, his lips curling up into a soft smile. "It's just that I get the feeling that I'm going to be confined to the doghouse again once Lindsay finds out what I've done."

Flack's eyes widened slightly. "And what exactly_ have_ you done?" he asked, almost afraid of the answer.

Danny sighed. "You remember how I was just after me and Lindsay split?" he asked.

"Drunk as a skunk most of the time if I recall," was his friend's caustic reply.

"Exactly," Danny said. "Initially, I guess I was in shock – I couldn't quite believe how quickly my life had imploded on me. Once the reality of the situation sank in though - I got maudlin first, and then I got mad – really, really mad in fact." He scrubbed his hands agitatedly over his face. "Dumb thing was I didn't take that anger out on Lindsay…"

"And you think you should have done?" Flack asked.

Danny shrugged. "Maybe, I don't know. I mean obviously Lucy was the most important thing at the time, but keeping everything so damn civilised between us meant that we never really communicated how we felt to each other. I think even unconstructive anger would have been better than the two of us being so insufferably polite to one another. At least it would have come from a place of real, honest emotion."

"Hindsight is a wonderful thing, Dan," Flack told him, "But also rather pointless as a rule."

"I know," Danny agreed, "And that's not really it anyway. I couldn't vent my anger at Lindsay, so I had to find an outlet for it elsewhere."

"In the bottom of a beer keg apparently," Flack remarked dryly, and then lifted his eyebrows speculatively, "And in another woman's bed maybe?" he suggested.

Danny shook his head. "No, no – Jesus Flack! I guess I could have found solace in meaningless sex, but I didn't. There was no-one else until Rachel. I was still totally in love with Lindsay at the time – even if she was difficult, stubborn and the bane of my existence."

"We _are_ going to get to the point eventually, right?" Flack cut in offhandedly.

"What?" Danny said with a touch of acid in his tone. "You're not enjoying our little tête-à-tête?"

"Oh no, it's making my heart go all pitter-pat," Flack said, lightly tapping his palm against his chest to illustrate his point before his brow furrowed in an expression of self-disgust, "Which is actually kind of scary come to think of it."

Danny grinned. "All right, so long story short. One particularly alcohol-soaked night – I umm… well, I… I kind of threw my wedding ring away," he confessed with a grimace.

"How do you 'kind of' throw something away?" his friend asked.

Danny shrugged. "I tossed it in the trash. It was meant to be symbolic. That's what I felt like you see, like Lindsay had thrown me out with the trash. I figured that if our marriage meant that little to her then the ring was nothing but a cheap trinket, one that was only fit for the garbage can. That garbage can in fact," he said, pointing his finger at the aluminium container in the corner.

"I'd just been served the divorce papers," he added by way of further explanation. "So I was in emotional free-fall at the time. It was stupid and rash, but it did make me feel better – for around five minutes at least anyway."

Lacing his fingers together at the base of his neck, he tipped his head back and let out a frustrated sigh. "The problem is, Flack - Lindsay kept her rings. I found them when we were clearing out her apartment after the fire." He shook his head. "She kept every goddamn thing I ever bought her. If I hadn't already known that she still had feelings for me, I would have figured it out then. Maybe you hold onto a few keepsakes for old times' sake, but you don't hoard every last one like family heirlooms, do you?"

"I guess not." Flack's voice was tight and controlled as if he was trying to hold something back, but this warning sign unfortunately passed his normally observant friend by.

"I didn't think anything of it until I got back home from Montana and saw all the pack-boxes stacked up in the spare room," Danny went on, oblivious. He heaved out a despondent sigh. "How am I going to tell her, Flack? I went to the jeweller's store today, and they don't sell that style of ring anymore so it's not like I can replace it without her knowing. And I'd feel guilty if I did that anyway – 'cus it wouldn't be the ring she put on my finger in the first place…"

"What the hell is so goddamn funny?" he demanded as Flack's control finally snapped and he began to snigger like a honking pig. "This isn't a joke, you know."

"I know, I know, but your face…" Flack broke down in guffaws of laughter. "You are _so_ whipped, Messer," he said, as he pushed back his chair and rose to his feet.

"I'm glad you find it so amusing," Danny grumbled, more than a little put-out by the lack of sympathy from his closest friend. "Where ya going?"

"To save your ass," Flack threw over his shoulder as he headed for his bedroom.

A minute or so later, he was back, bouncing a small, drawstring pouch in the centre of his palm. Sitting down, he up-ended its contents onto the table and Danny's eyes widened at the distinctive metallic band that clattered free. He snatched it up and tested its weight and fit on the third finger of his left hand. The ring felt cool against his skin and oddly bulky, but also comfortably familiar at the same time.

"Where did you get it?" he asked incredulously, twirling the band around on his finger to reassure himself that it was indeed real and not a figment of his imagination.

"The formerly mentioned garbage can," Flack told him, his tone sobering slightly. The situation may be a source of entertainment and amusement now, but, at the time, it had been anything but funny, he recalled…

_**Just over a year earlier…**_

Twisting the key in the lock, Flack pushed open the door to his apartment. "Danny? You here?" he called out as he stepped over the threshold.

He'd called his friend several times that day and had gotten no reply. Given the black, spaced-out mood that Danny had been in when he'd left that morning, it didn't bode well for what he would discover on his return. The apartment was mainly in darkness and eerily silent, the only light coming from the lamp in the corner. Stashing his gun in the hall closet, Flack moved further into the apartment's main living space and swore inelegantly at the sight that greeted him.

Danny was slumped forward over the kitchen table, surrounded by a tin-can alley of empty beer bottles. One - still clutched in his out-stretched hand - dripped amber liquid into an ever widening puddle on the linoleum floor.

"Jesus Messer!" he exclaimed, hurrying forward to ascertain exactly what condition his friend was in.

Danny groaned and weakly fended off the interference, reassuring Don that while he was clearly intoxicated, he thankfully hadn't crossed the line into alcohol-poisoned unconsciousness.

"Christ, you stink!" he said, letting Danny's head drop back down onto the table while he hooked a firm arm around his waist, pulled one limp arm across his shoulders, and hauled his friend to his feet.

It was like lugging a dead-weight, but he eventually made it to the bathroom, where he shoved the other man fully clothed into the walk-in shower and turned on the spray. Danny immediately began to cough and splutter in protest, and then bent double at the waist and unceremoniously threw up. When he was done, he started to swear profusely, calling Flack a few choice names that the detective wisely chose to ignore.

"Clean yourself up and get a grip, okay?" he said in a harsh tone. "I know things are rough for you at the moment, but Lucy needs a father not a drunken layabout. And if you were planning on winning your wife back any time soon, this is hardly the way to go about it, is it?"

Satisfied that Danny was sober enough to shower and change clothes without assistance, Flack turned abruptly on his heel. "I'll make coffee," he threw over his shoulder as a parting shot.

Going back into the kitchen, he cleaned up the mess on the floor and then began to gather up the empty beer bottles to throw in the trash. A thin sheaf of papers on the table caught his eye and he absently picked them up to move them to a safe place so that they wouldn't get mislaid. Glancing downwards, the bold print on the front sheet leapt out at him and he felt his heart sink inside his chest as the significance of the words registered on his brain.

It was a petition for divorce. Flack shook his head in stunned disbelief – he'd known it was bad, but he hadn't expected this even so. It sure as hell explained the sudden down-turn in his friend's mood this past week. Up until a few days ago, Danny had been relatively up-beat about the situation, fairly confident that when things calmed down a little, he and Lindsay could work things out. Clearly, his wife was not of the same opinion and had taken the necessary steps to permanently end their marriage. Had she even warned Danny of what was coming, Flack wondered, or had she just let him be served with the divorce papers out of the blue?

With the papers still clutched in his hand, he started back towards the bathroom, but changed directions when he realised that he could no longer hear the water running in the shower. Instead he followed the sounds of movement to the apartment's second bedroom. Unsure of exactly what to say, he stood uncertainly in the doorway, waiting until Danny finally registered his presence.

"When?" Flack asked simply when their eyes met.

Danny cleared his throat. "Five days ago," he said, his voice raspy. His skin was pale and sallow, his eyes blood-shot and his face considerably less close-shaven than normal. He looked a mess. He looked like a man who had unexpectedly had the rug pulled out from under him, and was now frantically scrambling to get back on his feet.

"Five days…" Flack's eyes widened. "Your birthday, you mean? Jesus Dan!"

"I don't think she…" Danny swallowed the lump in his throat and shook his head. "The courts decide, don't they?" He appealed to his friend for confirmation, not wanting to believe the woman he'd married could be so vindictive towards him.

Flack didn't want to believe it either – and couldn't. Lindsay may be many things, but deliberately cruel wasn't one of them. "Yeah, yeah, they do," he agreed. "I guess it's just when it makes it through the system. Luck of the draw, huh?" He shook his head sadly. "Why didn't you say something?"

Danny sat down on the edge of the bed. "I don't know, I suppose I didn't want to believe it."

"Have you spoken to Lindsay about this? Consulted a lawyer?"

Danny shook his head. "I don't want to think about that right now."

"Well, you're going to have to sooner or later. What about Lucy? Are the custody arrangements going to stay the same?"

"I don't know! I don't know, okay?" Danny burst out in frustration. "I can't get my head around the fact that my marriage is over yet. I mean I thought that we… I was sure that we could… Jesus! Dammit!"

Clutching his arms around his aching middle, he bent over at the waist and let his emotions shatter, his breath hitching in painful, heart-rending sobs.

Flack immediately started forward. "Dan…"

"Just leave me alone, okay?" Danny snapped, halting him in his tracks. Curling up into a ball on the bed, he hugged his knees to his chest. "Leave me alone," he pleaded, embarrassed at his lack of emotional control.

Not knowing what else to do, Flack quietly complied. Closing the door, he made his way back to the kitchen to finish clearing up, while he debated whether or not to put in a 911 call to Mac. He wasn't sure it was his place to impart such personal information, but he figured it was the older man's steady presence that his friend really needed right now. Mac would be sympathetic, but he would also help Danny to see straight and make the appropriate decisions about his future. He may even be able to provide some mediation with Lindsay too.

With a sigh, he scooped up a handful of beer bottles and was about to toss them in the trash when the glint of something metallic and shiny caught his eye. Setting the bottles back down on the counter, he bent to retrieve the item from the garbage can.

It was Danny's wedding ring. Don could perfectly understand his friend's reaction in tossing it under the circumstances, but he also knew that he probably wouldn't always feel that way. Once the hurt died down a little, it may even be an action he'd regret. He took a moment to consider his options, and then slipped the ring into his shirt pocket. He would hold onto it for safe keeping, he decided. When the time was right, he would mention it to Danny and let him make a more balanced decision about whether he wanted to keep it or not.

Right now though, there were more pressing matters to deal with than what to do with a discarded wedding ring. Fishing his cell out of his jacket pocket, he selected the number he wanted and lifted the phone to his ear. After a short wait, the line connected and a familiar voice responded with a curt, business-like greeting.

"Mac Taylor."

"Hey Mac, Flack here. Umm… can you come over to my place? We err… we have something of a situation…"

_**Present day…**_

"… I found it when I was cleaning up after your sorry ass," Flack continued after a momentary pause for reflection, "I figured I ought to rescue it, but there never seemed to be a right time to mention it after that."

"Well, your timing's spot on," Danny said with palpable relief. "I had no idea how I was going to explain it to Lindsay."

Sliding the white gold band from his finger, he reached out for the drawstring pouch and deposited the ring back inside. Securing the fastening tight, he offered it back to Flack. "Hold onto this for me, will you?" he requested.

"Aren't you going to put it back on?" Flack asked, confused.

Danny shook his head. "No, me and Linds made a pact. No guarantees, not yet, but when we feel like we're at that place again, we'll reaffirm our commitment to each other."

"So you're gonna do it properly this time around?" Flack asked with a grin. "Down on bended knee? The whole she-bang?"

Danny laughed. "Well, I think we can do better than a surprise shotgun wedding at City Hall, but I don't know, Flack, all that slushy, romantic stuff – that's not really me."

"So what? A 'Marry Me Monroe' bill-board in Times Square?" Flack suggested jokingly. "A big screen proposal at the Giants' Stadium?"

Danny grinned. "Probably more my style," he said, "But I think Lindsay might prefer something a little more subtle."

Don nodded. "So, does this mean I get to be Best Man?" he asked. "I've already proved I can be trusted not to lose the rings," he said, holding up the drawstring bag as evidence.

Danny laughed. "We're kind of getting ahead of ourselves here, but tell you what? Me and Linds make it that far? You'll definitely be on the shortlist."

"The shortlist?" Flack protested with mock offence. "I'm hurt, Messer, hurt."

Standing up, he playfully twirled the small bag containing Danny's ring around his forefinger. "I'm holding this to ransom until you pay up," he threatened, and then deftly skipped out the way when his friend made an ineffectual swipe for the bounty. "You snooze, you lose, Messer," he taunted as he went to stash his treasure somewhere safe and secure.

Danny shook his head with a laugh, grateful that he had been spared from having to explain the absence of his wedding ring to Lindsay. Relations were fragile between them at the moment so they could do without any unnecessary glitches. Not that he'd expected her to be completely without understanding about why he'd done what he'd done, but he knew she'd be hurt even so.

He sighed. His and Lindsay's entire future was riding on how they negotiated the next few months together and the pressure was really starting to weigh on him. He wanted their marriage to work, but the thought of how easily he could put a foot wrong and blow everything haunted him night and day. They were walking a precarious tight-rope together and one mistake could plunge them both to earth without the benefit of a safety-net to break their fall.

Ice-water trickled down his spine at that thought and he was beset with the sudden urge to hear Lindsay's voice. Pulling out his cell, he hit speed-dial one…

**OOOOOO**

_**Montana, **__**about forty-five minutes earlier…**_

"Be careful!" Lindsay warned her daughter as they crossed the gravelled ground towards the waiting car.

Wanting to be involved in proceedings, Lucy had insisted on carrying one of the cake-boxes herself and had it balanced at a distinctively unsafe angle in her mother's opinion.

"I okay, Mommy," the little girl responded with typical child-like confidence. "I'm holding on tight, I promise."

Lindsay blew out her breath from between her lips, trying to calm the roiling of her stomach. Her nerves were reaching fever-pitch and her body was reacting physically to the trauma as it always did. She felt sick, her head was pounding and her heart was racing fifteen to the dozen. In less than an hour's time, they would be arriving at the community centre for the bake-sale and the confrontation she'd been dreading for sixteen years could no longer be avoided.

"Oh God!" she murmured as her vision started to turn grey at the edges. She was hovering on the edge of a panic attack now and was struggling to keep a grip on her fraying self-control.

"Grams – you baked lots of cakes," she heard Lucy comment over the buzzing in her ears.

"I know I did, sweetie," Elizabeth replied, "But you and Mommy helped as well."

"We made smiley-face cookies and pink cup-cakes with fairy-dust sprinkles," Lucy told her proudly.

"And very yummy they look too," her grandmother replied. "Now – can you be a good girl and go and tell Gramps that we're leaving?"

"Isn't he coming too?" Lucy asked in a faintly disappointed tone.

"Yes," Elizabeth assured her, "But he's going to be joining us a little later because he needs to help Ethan with the horses first."

"Okay," Lucy said easily, and then skipped back towards the house to complete her assigned task.

Taking the last couple of boxes from Lindsay's trembling hands, Elizabeth stashed them beside the others in the loaded trunk, and then turned back to draw her pale-looking daughter into a comforting hug. "You don't have to do this if you don't want to, you know," she murmured.

"Yes I do, Mom," Lindsay insisted shakily. "I just… I don't want to be that person again, okay? I don't want to be the star of a show that I never volunteered for."

"Honey listen – the shooting was probably the most terrible tragedy to ever befall this town, but it doesn't dominate everyone's thinking like it did in the first few years after it happened. I think most people are going to be genuinely happy to see the success that you've made of your life…"

Lindsay snorted derisively at that. "Almost fainting at the thought of attending a community bake-sale is making a success of myself?" she remarked dryly.

"There are plenty of people out there who are nervous in crowds, and you have more reason than most to be that way," her mother pointed out. "You should walk in there today with your head held high and be proud of what you've achieved. You have a successful career in New York, not to mention the cutest daughter in the entire U.S of A. That is what people are going to see, Lindsay, the rest is your own private business and only known to those closest to you."

Lindsay pulled back, brushing away her tears with the tips of her fingers. "How come you always know what to say to make me feel better?" she asked.

Elizabeth smiled. "Oh honey, I don't. I've just learned to trust my instincts where my children are concerned, that's all. Nine times out of ten I get it right, but my batting average was a whole lot lower when you kids were younger."

Lindsay's lips quirked up into a watery smile at that. "I don't remember that," she said. "You've been my rock for as far back as I can remember."

Elizabeth's emotions welled up at that. "Now, now, don't start that," she gently scolded. "Or you'll have me blubbing."

Reaching out, she tenderly cupped her daughter's face in her hands. "I love all my kids equally, but you…" She broke off with a regretful sigh. "You are my baby, and I hate that you got so hurt and I couldn't do anything to prevent that…"

"Mom…"

"No." Elizabeth placed a finger over Lindsay's lips and shook her head. "Don't deny the truth. I wanted to, for many years I wanted to, but what happened, happened and it can't be taken back. I thought that time and love would make it all better, but it just doesn't work like that. That night changed our family's lives forever. That's been hard for all of us to accept at one time or another, but I think it has enriched who we are too."

She smiled. "It's ironic really, your brothers and sister all came back home after college to be there for you, and yet it's you who have ultimately flown the nest."

"I always thought it would be Mel and Chris who would end up experiencing the big city lights," Lindsay remarked.

Elizabeth nodded. "Yes, me too. You and Brian were always the home-bodies growing up, while Mel and Chris had all the adventurous spirit. They're both content with the way their lives turned out though, so I don't think either of them has ever viewed staying put as a sacrifice. And as much as we all miss you – I think being away from here is what's right for you. Time may have lessened the pain, but it hasn't banished it completely, has it?"

Lindsay shook her head. "No, no, it hasn't," she agreed.

"But being away from the daily reminders does ease the burden," Elizabeth remarked astutely. "You only have to look at you to see that. You've blossomed since you moved to New York – and that's not just down to love and motherhood. It's much more profound than that. For years, you've been like a bird with a broken wing, but now you're truly learning to fly again. I'm so proud of you, honey."

"Mom!" Lindsay protested. "Now you're making _me_ cry. Lucy's gonna wonder what's up with us both."

"You just tell her mothers and daughters are entitled to have their sappy moments every once in a while," Elizabeth said, drawing her into another hug before she stepped back to compose herself.

Following her Mom's lead, Lindsay sniffed back her remaining tears and turned to smile at her daughter as she came barrelling back towards them, her pigtails bouncing with her movements.

"You ready to go?" she asked Lucy as the little girl skidded to a halt beside them.

Lucy nodded enthusiastically. "Gramps says we have to save him a piece of chocolate cake," she informed them. "He says he'll pay top dollar for it."

Lindsay laughed and glanced at her mother. "So how much does a piece of your chocolate cake go for nowadays?" she enquired with a smile.

"Mmm," Elizabeth mused. "Twenty bucks?"

"Only twenty?" Lindsay said with faux astonishment. "I would say it's worth at least fifty."

Elizabeth laughed. "I tell you what; I'll let you negotiate the price with him," she suggested as Lindsay strapped Lucy into her booster-seat.

Her daughter grinned. "I'll use the 'Please Daddy' soulful eyes on him," she decided. "That'll get results. It always works for this one," she said, playfully poking Lucy's nose and making her giggle. "She's a virtuoso at it."

"And Danny's just as much a sucker for it as your Dad is," Elizabeth remarked dryly as she took her seat behind the wheel and Lindsay climbed into the passenger seat beside her.

"Of course," her daughter said with aplomb. "I taught her everything she knows."

Elizabeth smiled as she turned over the engine, glad that Lindsay's mood seemed to have brightened. Some of it was nervous energy, she knew, but it did appear that the threatened panic attack had been mercifully avoided.

They chatted easily on the twenty-minute journey to the community centre, but as they turned into the parking lot, Lindsay's nerves made an unwelcome return. Realising that her daughter needed a moment to compose herself, Elizabeth got out the driver's seat and un-strapped Lucy from the back, and then proceeded to direct the transfer of the cake-boxes from the car to the stall already set up for them in the community centre's main hall.

Alone in the passenger seat, Lindsay breathed in deeply through her nose and out through her mouth until her accelerated heart-rate was back under control. She could do this, she knew she could. It was mind over matter. She had to trust in her mother's assurances – the reality was not going to be half as bad as her over-anxious mind imagined. People were not going to look at her and see a damaged victim, they were going to look at her and see a survivor.

Her cell-phone sounded just as she had plucked up the courage to get out the car and she smiled at the familiar face on the display. His timing couldn't have been better. Without even being aware of it, Danny's voice was exactly what she needed to hear right now.

"Hi!" she said as she answered the call.

"Hey! How ya doin'?"

"I'm…" She was going to say 'good,' but realised at the last minute that that was an automatic response rather than a truthful one. "… Nervous," she admitted. "I'm sitting in Mom's car outside the community centre," she explained. "She and Lucy have already gone inside."

"I know it's a lot to face, Linds, but you can do it, you know you can."

"I wish you were here," she said quietly.

"I am," he told her. "Maybe not physically, but in spirit, I'm there with you, holding your hand, every step of the way. Just remember that, huh?"

"I think that's probably one of the sweetest things anyone's ever said to me," Lindsay told him.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm a regular Romeo," he said dryly, making her smile.

"Were you calling for a reason?" she asked of him.

"Not especially," he replied. "I just wanted to hear your voice."

Lindsay giggled. "And there you go again," she teased.

Danny's low chuckle was music to her ears. "I suppose I was feeling nervous too," he confessed.

"About what?"

"About this, about us. I'm afraid I'm gonna mess it up somehow."

"You don't have to walk on egg-shells around me, Danny," she told him.

"It feels like it sometimes."

Lindsay sighed. "I know, I know. I haven't made it easy for you, have I?"

"That's not what I meant exactly," Danny said, "But I guess I do worry that you'll react badly if we hit another bump in the road. We'll get through it though, I know we will. I guess I just needed to hear your voice to remind myself of that."

"You know I wasn't sure I was ready to come home," Lindsay told him then. "It felt like such a daunting prospect. Here at my parents' place with my Mom around twenty-four-seven, I feel safe, secure." She sighed. "But I'm hiding from the world and I need to get back out into it or I'm never going to find my way past this. I felt so alone before I left, but it helps that I have you to come home to. I know you're not my saviour, but I'm glad that I've got you beside me to hold my hand even so."

"Right back at ya, babe," Danny murmured gruffly.

"Okay so I'm going to do this," Lindsay said with renewed determination. "I'm getting out of this car and walking in there with my head held high like my Mom told me I should."

"You go girl!" Danny encouraged. "It's going to be okay, I promise," he assured her, keeping his fingers crossed that Susan Broomfield would take the opportunity to right her past wrong.

Because Lindsay needed her to. He hated the word and all its connotations, but she needed closure on that part of her life in order for her to fully embrace their future. It would be the first step towards healing her cracked self-esteem, and with the discovery of a greater sense of self, she would gradually learn to have more faith in him.

For he knew that while his infidelity with Rikki Sandoval had definitely played its part; it was not the only reason for her lack of trust in him. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw a woman who was lacking, so did not fully understand what it was that held him to her. That meant that she was always expecting him to abandon ship for a place where the grass was greener. She had to get over that, or the constant need for him to prove his commitment to her would grind them down to the point where there was nothing left for either of them to give.

He heard Lindsay draw in a deep breath. "Wish me luck," she said, her voice wavering slightly.

He smiled. "You sound like you're going into battle," he remarked.

"It feels like it," she replied. "I know I'm building this up to be more than it is, but I've been hiding from it for sixteen years now, Danny. That's a lot of baggage to shed."

"I know, I know. Just try to focus on the end-game, huh? Imagine how much lighter you'll feel when it's all over."

"Yes coach," she said with a smile in her voice.

He laughed. "Call me later, yeah? I'm going to go whip Flack's ass on the basketball court right now," he said, ignoring the derisive snort from his friend who had re-joined him in the kitchen, "But I'll be home in a few hours."

"All right, I will do. I love you."

"Yeah, yeah, love you too. Speak to you soon, yeah? And give Luce a big kiss from me when you see her."

"Okay so bye then."

"Yeah, bye babe…"

After the call had disconnected, Lindsay deposited her cell back in her purse and got out of the car. The cool autumnal breeze ruffled her hair as she breathed in a few calming gulps of the fresh mountain air to centre herself. Finally accepting that the time for prevarication was well and truly over, she screwed up her courage and approached the community centre with determination in her step.

As she pushed open the door to the main hall, she braced herself for the public reaction to her presence, but it barely even registered on the Richter scale - everyone was too busy setting up the stalls that lined the perimeter of the hall to notice her somewhat nervous entrance. Feeling a little calmer, she crossed the slatted wooden floor to join her Mom and small daughter at their stall.

"Look Mommy!" Lucy said proudly. "Look at what I did." She pointed at the tray where she'd carefully laid out an alternating pattern of smiley-face cookies and pink, fairy-dust cupcakes. "Doesn't it look pretty?"

Lindsay smiled. "It sure does, sweetie," she concurred, laying an affectionate hand on top of her daughter's head.

"I think she's developing a talent for advertising," Elizabeth quipped with a smile.

"Hello honey!"

Lindsay turned to find herself engulfed in an affectionate embrace from her mother's closest friend, Olivia Bailey. "Good to see you. This one's growing up, huh?" she said, smiling down at Lucy. "Last time I saw you, you were about this big," she said, holding her hands about thirty centimetres apart to illustrate, "Just a tiny baby."

"I'm four now," Lucy informed her. "Are you the lady who's sharing our stall?" she asked.

"I sure am, honey. I always like to make sure I'm on the winning team and your Grams bakes the best cakes."

Lucy nodded. "I know," she agreed.

"She's got the family loyalty down pat, huh?" Olivia said; winking at Lindsay who laughed before the two of them set about laying out the rest of the cakes.

"You gotta save Gramps a piece," Lucy reminded her grandmother a few minutes later, as she watched Elizabeth deftly slice a huge chocolate cake into eight, equally-sized pieces.

Her grandmother smiled. "I've not forgotten, sweetheart," she said, sliding one of the triangular slices free and setting it to one side for exactly that purpose.

"Looking good, Mom," Christopher Monroe remarked as he approached the table to survey the wares on offer. "Hey munchkin!" he said, tugging on one of his niece's pigtails.

"Hey Uncle Chris!" Lucy replied with a sunny smile. "Is Hannah here?"

"Not yet, sweetie. She and Aunt Annabel are coming by later."

"You gonna buy a cake?"

"Well," Chris said calculatingly. "I was kinda hoping to snag myself a freebie."

"You hafta pay!" Lucy told him sternly. "We made them to make money for the sick babies."

"Does she have to take so much after you?" Chris complained to his grinning sister. "That husband of yours has got a little bit of rebel in him, hasn't he? Hasn't she at least inherited some of his bad-boy traits?"

"More than you know," Lindsay replied. "But not even Danny would contemplate stealing money from sick babies," she went on self-righteously. She held out her hand. "Pay up, bro."

"All right, all right," Chris grumbled, reaching into his pocket for change. "How much?"

"What do you want?" Lucy asked, excitedly dashing around to the other side of the table to act as shop-girl.

"Mmm…" Chris tapped his chin thoughtfully. "What do you recommend?"

"Well, Grams' chocolate cake is nice – Gramps wants some of that," she told him. "And me and Mommy made smiley-face cookies and fairy-dust cupcakes."

"Fairy-dust cupcakes? Which are those?"

"The pink ones," Lucy said, pointing them out with her forefinger.

"And is it real fairy-dust? Because I'd hate to think you were selling me fakes."

"Christopher!" his mother admonished.

He grinned at her. "Go with it, Mom."

Lucy giggled. "It fizzes in your mouth," she told him.

"Well, I suppose that makes up for the false advertising then," he said. "I guess I'll have one of those."

Lucy beamed. "Is that fifty cents?" she asked her grandmother.

"Yes honey, but I think Uncle Chris should be charged a dollar as a penalty for trying to get out of paying in the first place, don't you?"

Lucy nodded solemnly in agreement. "That will be one dollar please," she said brightly, holding out her little hand to receive the payment.

"This is extortion, you know," Chris told her as he handed over the coin.

"What's X-or-shone?" Lucy asked, puzzled.

"Never you mind, sweetie," Lindsay cut in. "Your Uncle's just being a bad sport."

"Yeah and your innocent baby girl hustles like a pro," Chris shot back good-naturedly.

Lindsay laughed, knowing it was true. Lucy knew just how to use those big baby blues and sweet smiles to her advantage. She looked down at her daughter with a warmly affectionate smile. Her little girl was dressed in a cute denim dress with candy-striped pink-and-yellow leggings on underneath. Her honey-blonde hair was caught up in two stubby pigtails decorated with a pair of butterfly barrettes. She was as pretty as a picture and sweet-natured with it. She was also smart and as cunning as a fox – as her doting Uncle had so astutely observed.

It was very much a moment of clarity for Lindsay as she finally recognised what her Mom had been trying to tell her all along. Lucy was her own person, but she was also a product of how she'd been raised. In some ways, she was a symbol of how far Lindsay had come in the last sixteen years. She knew her daughter wasn't perfect, but there was a whole lot of which she should be proud.

She hadn't let her past break her. Yes, she had her troubles, and her marriage needed some work, but she and Danny were hanging on in there in spite of everything. She could have so easily retreated into herself and become something of her hermit, but she hadn't. She'd dug deep and found the strength to live her life, to pursue her chosen career, to laugh and to love. She was a mother of a beautiful and intelligent little girl and that was the greatest achievement of all.

"What is it, Mommy?" Lucy asked, sensing her mother's scrutiny and looking up questionably.

"Nothing sweetie," Lindsay said, bending to gather her little girl in her arms. "I was just thinking how much I love you is all."

"To the moon and back?" Lucy asked.

"Oh way, way more than that," Lindsay said with a smile. "To the end of the universe and back at least."

Lucy beamed. "I love you too, Mommy," she declared, invitingly puckering up her lips for a kiss.

Lindsay obliged her and then held her little girl close for a moment longer before finally setting her back down on her feet. "Okay then," she said. "Let's get on with this. You think we can sell all our cakes before everyone else?"

Lucy nodded. "Yes 'cus Grams makes the best cakes!"

Chris laughed. "Such confidence," he remarked. "Of course she has a point," he added with an affectionate wink at his mother.

"Flattery'll get you nowhere, my boy," Elizabeth told him acidly. "If you've not got anything better to do with your time then get round here and pull your weight."

"Yes Mom," her son said obediently. "How come she always makes me feel like I'm sixteen again?" he said to his sister.

"Probably because you never grew up," Lindsay replied. "This illusion of respectability – it's all a sham."

Chris was about to respond, but the retort died on his lips as a sudden hush fell over the hall. Lindsay's anxiety immediately spiked as she spotted Susan Broomfield enter the room, but her confidence was quickly buoyed by the strong, capable hand that her brother placed against the small of her back.

She watched in sympathy as her lost friend's Mom stood awkwardly in the entranceway, unsure of what to do with all eyes upon her. Eventually, she squared her shoulders and headed towards Elizabeth and Olivia's stall, clutching the two boxes of cakes that she'd brought with her tightly against her chest.

"You got room for one more?" she asked a little nervously.

"Sure," Elizabeth said easily.

"Do you want to be on the winning team too?" Lucy innocently enquired, breaking some of the tension. "We're going to try to sell our cakes before everyone else."

Susan couldn't help the smile that spread across her lips at that. "Well, I hope these will help with the team effort," she said, setting her boxes down and opening the lid of the top one.

"Pumpkin pie," Lindsay remarked with a catch in her voice.

Susan nodded. "Kelly's favourite," she said simply.

Lindsay felt the tears spill but she didn't care. Because of what had happened at the funeral, she'd never grieved. Not for Kelly, for Dana and Sophie, yes, but never for Kelly. She'd held that grief in her heart for sixteen long years and had not let it go until now.

"Oh honey, I'm so sorry!" Susan exclaimed softly, reaching out with her hand to gently touch Lindsay's face.

"It's okay," Lindsay said. "It doesn't matter now. I thought it did, but it doesn't."

"It does matter," Susan told her firmly. "To me, to Kelly. She loved you and she would want the words to be spoken."

"You were grieving, I…"

Susan shook her head. "I was angry that Kelly had been taken from me and I lashed out at the most convenient target. It was inexcusable and the biggest regret of my life. You were just a child. I really am so very sorry."

"It's okay," Lindsay said, smiling through her tears. "I understand… I…" She looked down at Lucy, who had instinctively slipped her hand into hers. "I get it."

"Why you crying, Mommy?" Lucy asked worriedly.

"I was just remembering that's all," Lindsay said, crouching down beside her daughter and drawing her close.

"And that makes you sad?"

Lindsay nodded. "And happy too," she said. "See Mommy had a very special friend called Kelly when she was growing up, but she died when she and Mommy were fifteen."

"So she lives with the angels now?"

"Yes, she lives with the angels."

"Did you know Kelly too?" Lucy asked Susan.

"This is Kelly's Mommy, baby," Lindsay explained.

Lucy nodded, her expression a little wary as she picked up on the heightened emotions emanating from those around her. Lindsay could tell she wasn't quite sure how to react. Eventually, she seemed to make a decision and trotted around to the front of the table to pick out one of the cupcakes. She turned and offered it to Susan in her cupped palms.

"You should have one of these," she said. "They're fairy-dust cupcakes and the fairies get the magic dust from the angels so Kelly helped make it too."

"Outta the mouths of babes," Chris murmured, sliding an arm around Lindsay's shoulders and hugging her close as Susan knelt to accept the cake from Lucy, tears sparkling in her eyes.

Lindsay smiled at him, her heart fit to burst with pride. Outta the mouths of babes indeed. After sixteen painful years, it was a child's simple logic and outlook on life - and death - that had finally put everything into perspective for her. Tragedy happened, but there was always hope.

And those you lost never really fully left you. Through memories and fairy-dust cupcakes you could hold them close forever...

_**To be continued…**_


	19. Level One

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **I know, I know, I made you wait for an update again, didn't I? So sorry - my bad. Real life is really hectic at the moment and unfortunately is likely to be so for the next couple of months. Updates may be a little haphazard for a while therefore, although I'm trying my best to keep them as frequent as possible. However, there are only so many hours in the day – if you know how to make more then let me know! LOL!

**OOOOOO**

_**Part **__**19 – Level One**_

After a long and emotion-filled day, Lindsay Monroe Messer was bone-tired. Her young daughter on the other hand seemed to have her energy levels cranked up to hyper. It was nearing her bedtime, but she was still bouncing off the walls like some sort of perpetual motion machine.

"Do you think Daddy will have remembered my present?" she asked excitedly, as she skipped along the corridor towards the airport arrivals hall, straining against the tight hold that her mother had on her hand.

Lindsay sighed. She knew Lucy wasn't really that mercenary – not after all the effort and enthusiasm her little girl had put into the charity bake-sale yesterday - but the promised present had been mentioned repeatedly over the past couple of hours, and it was finally time to rein in that uncharacteristic materialism.

"If he hasn't then I don't want any sulks," she warned. "He's been busy at work and the most important thing is to see him again, isn't it?"

Lucy's bottom lip jutted out at that. "But he promised!" she said, the words emerging as a distinctive whine, which had a similar effect on her mother's fraying nerves as the sound of nails scraping down a blackboard might have done.

Lindsay's eyes narrowed. "What did I just say?" she demanded sternly.

"But it's not fair!" Lucy burst out in indignant protest, two bright spots of colour appearing on the apples of her cheeks as her temper sparked.

"Well, sometimes life isn't fair," her mother told her flatly. "And you just have to accept that as the way it is."

Lucy promptly burst into tears at that. "I don't like you anymore, Mommy!" she wailed, causing several of their fellow passengers to turn their heads at the sudden commotion in their midst.

"Now listen!" Lindsay knelt down and took hold of her daughter's shoulders in her hands. "You keep that up and you won't be getting a present even if Daddy has remembered to buy you one."

"Will too!" Lucy shot back defiantly. "Daddy will give me my present whatever _you_ say. He loves me!"

Lindsay gritted her teeth in frustration, knowing that her little girl was more than likely over-wrought from all the excitement rather than deliberately pushing her buttons. Losing her temper was counterproductive. She needed to deal with the situation calmly and sensibly if she didn't want a full-blown temper tantrum on her hands. Keeping a cool head was easier said than done when all she wanted to do was go home, indulge in a long, hot bath and curl up in the warm sanctuary of her bed however.

On the plus side, of course, was the fact that Lucy's outlandish claim about her father's reaction was entirely without foundation. Danny may be a soft touch where his daughter was concerned, but he was straight down the line when it came to the standards of behaviour that they expected from her. They rarely disagreed when it came to disciplining their child. Lindsay knew he'd back her up one hundred percent if it became necessary to follow through with the threatened punishment.

"This is your final warning, Lucy," she said in a low, authoritative tone, making it clear that she meant business. "I want an apology for your rudeness this minute or Daddy will get to hear about it."

"And I can guarantee you that he'll agree with Mommy about the consequences of such behaviour," she added for extra emphasis.

Now Lucy Messer may be stubborn as a mule and occasionally prone to acts of childish rebellion, but she was no fool. At four and a half, she knew perfectly well that further revolt would only lead to misery and chastisement for her. Hiccupping a little from the effort it took, she therefore swallowed back her tears and begrudgingly issued the demanded apology.

"I sorry, Mommy," she said contritely.

Lindsay nodded. It was a distinct improvement on a few months ago that was for sure. Back then Lucy's handle on her self-control was such that the smart thing to do would have been easily outweighed by her anger at the perceived injustice against her.

That thought made her sigh. Her baby girl was growing up fast and there was nothing she could do to slow the passage of time. Soon she would be entering first grade and before long starting High School. Next thing they knew, she would be turning eighteen and leaving home for a college dorm-room…

Shaking her head to clear those runaway thoughts, Lindsay laughed inwardly at herself before focusing her attention back on her daughter – all four and a half years of her. "All right," she said solemnly. "Apology accepted. Are you going to be a good girl now?"

Lucy nodded, her honey-blonde pigtails bouncing with the movement. "Yes Mommy, I promise Mommy."

"Okay - so kisses and cuddles then," she said brightly, opening her arms to show that all was forgiven.

Lucy willingly submitted to the offered embrace. "Can we go find Daddy now?" she asked when her mother released her.

"I think we should," Lindsay said as they continued on their way down the corridor. "He's probably wondering where we've gotten to."

"I bet he thinks we missed our plane!" Lucy remarked with a mischievous giggle.

Disarmed by her little girl's cheeky delight, Lindsay smiled, marvelling at how Lucy's mood could turn on an apparent flip of a switch. One minute her behaviour would try the patience of a saint, the next she couldn't be more affable. Motherhood was definitely something of a rollercoaster ride in Lindsay's opinion, but she couldn't deny that it fulfilled her in ways that she never thought possible.

When they passed through the automatic doors into Arrivals, Lucy pulled free of her mother's hold, spotting Danny waiting beyond the barrier. "Daddy!" she called out, running pell-mell towards him, all thought of presents and punishments swept from her mind in her excitement at seeing him again.

A wide smile gracing his lips, Danny crouched down, ready to sweep her up into his arms the moment she launched herself into his waiting embrace. "Hey sweetheart!" he crooned as he cuddled his little girl close and pressed a warm kiss into her silky hair. "You missed me, huh?"

Lucy lifted her face from his throat to answer him, but kept her arms wrapped tightly around his neck as she did so. "Lots and lots!" she told him sweetly, making his heart squeeze inside his chest at the simple and honest affection those words conveyed.

"Yeah well I missed you too, pumpkin," he said, playfully tweaking her nose and making her giggle.

Shifting her onto his left hip, he turned to greet Lindsay with a warm smile and twinkling blue eyes. "Hey babe!" he said, reaching out with his free hand to draw her close, and then frowning in consternation when she automatically stepped back, lifting her palms out in front of her to ward off his touch.

"Linds?" he questioned, his brow creasing in confusion.

Lindsay swallowed the sudden lump that had arisen in her throat. "I… I can't… not here," she explained, meeting his gaze head-on to reassure him that her rejection wasn't intended to be personal.

Witnessing the touching reunion between father and daughter, she'd been suddenly blind-sided by a simple and undeniable truth. She had her family back. She'd known it in Montana, but it seemed so much more real now they were back here in New York. Up until a week ago, the three of them had existed as two separate units. Now with her and Danny's marital bond partly re-established, they were slowly beginning to merge back into one, and Lindsay couldn't have been more grateful for the renewed sense of belonging that afforded her.

Unwilling to separate her daughter from her beloved father and therefore unable to return to the bosom of her family back in Montana, she had struggled with loneliness on a daily basis for months now. Couple that with an acute sense of regret over her too hasty pursuit of divorce and it was no wonder that her depression had returned to haunt her like a ghost in need of exorcism.

"You look tired," Danny noted, reaching out to lightly caress her cheek, unable to completely refrain from touching her in spite of her deliberate withdrawal from any form of physical contact between them.

"It's been a long day," Lindsay told him, her voice raspy with the emotions that she was struggling to keep in check.

On a steep learning curve where his wife's illness was concerned, Danny merely nodded. He was unused to this emotional fragility in her. She needed taking care of in ways that she never had done before. He'd be lying if he said that didn't scare him, but neither was he going to shirk the responsibility that at least one, if not both, of the men who had come before him had done. Wasn't that what marriage was all about after all? To love and to cherish? In sickness and in health? He'd meant the words when he'd said them. He wasn't going to break those promises now just because keeping them might be a little tough.

Setting his daughter back down on her sneaker-clad feet, he reached for the handle of Lindsay's suitcase. "Okay team," he said encouragingly. "Homeward bound then…"

With their excitedly chattering daughter bouncing between them like a yo-yo, they headed out to the parking lot and Danny's car. He had never felt the need for one until Lucy was born. Public transport and his Harley had always gotten him to where he wanted to go. He'd quickly learned that practicality ruled when you became a parent however. You could not take a pre-schooler on the back of a motorbike for instance, plus supervising an energetic four year old on the New York subway system was a military operation. Not to mention the fact that constant cabs were a drain on the personal finances. Sometimes strapping your child into the back of a car and braving the city traffic was your best option therefore.

While Lindsay secured Lucy into her booster-seat, Danny stashed her suitcase in the trunk and then retrieved the square package he'd left in there for safe-keeping. His daughter's eyes lit up like two neon lights when she spotted it in his hands. "Is that my present?" she asked eagerly.

"Might be," he teased before handing it over with a smile.

"Thank-you Daddy!" she squealed and then her face fell. "Can I still have it?" she asked her Mom anxiously.

"What's this?" Danny enquired, throwing a questioning look at his wife who had settled herself into the passenger seat while the present exchange had been taking place.

Lindsay waved off his query with a mildly-spoken 'later' and then turned in her seat and fixed her gaze on her daughter. "You can because you were a good girl and you apologised, but remember it can always go in the forfeit box if you're naughty again."

Lucy nodded solemnly. "Okay Mommy."

Lindsay smiled. Despite the earlier incident, Lucy was a well-behaved child when all was said and done. She was still very young though, and as far as Lindsay was concerned the perfectly-behaved four year-old didn't exist. Children that age lived with their emotions on the surface and their control over them was severely limited. Time-outs, reward charts and confiscation of favourite toys worked to curb any excesses on Lucy's part however, and Lindsay was proud that they were raising such a well-mannered and engaging child as a result.

"So – are you going to open it?" she asked.

Her daughter beamed and proceeded to tear off the wrapping with enthusiasm. Inside was a cloth doll, clad in a pink gingham dress and ruffled petticoats with a brightly-coloured mop cap on her head. Her hair was made of coiled brown wool, while her embroidered eyes were big and blue and her bowed lips a deep ruby red.

"What's her name?" Lucy asked in a tone of childish wonder as she examined the toy in her hands

"I don't know," Danny replied. "I guess you'll have to think of one."

Lucy pursed her lips as she considered that. "Nomi," she eventually decided. "Her name is Nomi."

Danny grinned. "Well, that's a new one," he remarked to Lindsay, who smiled at him in return.

"I think she probably means Naomi," she explained. "There's a little girl on one of her favourite TV shows called that."

"She sings!" Lucy suddenly exclaimed, discovering this added benefit as her father climbed into the driver's seat and inserted his keys into the ignition.

"She has an off-switch, I checked," Danny assured his wife as the tinny sound of 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' filled the car's interior.

Lindsay laughed, recalling the singing 'Happy Birthday' card that he'd bought for their daughter on her second birthday - the one that had driven them both insane for nearly three weeks before the sealed-in battery had finally died. They had tried accidentally mislaying it, but the monumental fuss their toddler had kicked up as a result was as cringe-inducing as the annoyingly repetitive birthday song had been. They had eventually managed to consign the irritating item to metaphorical toy heaven when their little girl had forlornly proclaimed that her favourite plaything 'no work no more.' Even at two, Lucy had understood the term 'broken' much to her parents' infinite relief.

Reaching over the gear shift, Danny tangled his fingers with his wife's and lifted their joined hands to his lips to press a gentle kiss to the back of her knuckles. Her eyes meeting his, Lindsay stroked her fingers over his roughly-shaven cheek in response, and then let her hand drop back down into her lap.

As they left the airport behind them and headed back into the city, they felt no need for further conversation. For the first fifteen minutes or so, they were content to listen to their daughter's imaginary chatter with her new doll.

"I think that's our Lucy-Lu done for the day," Danny remarked in low tones after a quick glance in the rear view mirror when the little girl too fell silent.

Lindsay twisted in her seat to observe their daughter. She'd fallen asleep with Nomi clutched tightly to her chest. "She's had a long day. She was up at the crack of dawn this morning," she told Danny as she turned back to face the front again. "And what with everyone stopping by to say good-bye before we left…"

"That was tough on you, huh?" Danny remarked astutely.

Caught unawares, Lindsay hastily blinked back the resultant tears. "It's always hard to say good-bye," she told him falteringly. "I guess this time was harder than most because…. Well, just because, you know?"

"Yeah, I know," Danny soothed, then paused for a moment before continuing. "I err… I spoke to Mac," he quietly informed her. "I've managed to switch my shifts so that I can accompany you to your doctor's appointment on Tuesday."

"You didn't have to do that," Lindsay protested.

"Yeah, I did," Danny contradicted. "It's not just about supporting you, you know. I wanted to ask some questions for my own peace of mind too. This is all still very new to me, and I want to be sure I'm helping you in every way that I can."

"You're doing just fine," Lindsay assured him.

Danny shrugged. "Maybe, but I still feel like I'm stumbling around in the dark a lot of the time."

She sighed. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For putting you through this. It's not what you signed up for, is it?"

"I signed up for a lifetime commitment, Lindsay. This is part of who you are so it kind of comes with the territory. I'm not saying it's not tough, but I'm not gonna walk away from it either. You've gotta learn to trust in that, babe."

Lindsay nodded, her gaze downcast. "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry I'm such an emotional mess at the moment."

"And you need to stop apologising for that too," Danny cut in firmly. "There are things that we both definitely have to be sorry for, but your depression isn't one of them, all right? Stop judging me through other men's opinions of you. I can understand why you do, but it's gonna piss me off if it continues for much longer."

Lindsay's lips tightened at that. "Well, there's nothing like telling it like it is," she remarked dryly.

Danny flickered a quick, sidelong glance in her direction before his eyes returned to the road in front of him. "There's a whole world of difference between understanding and accepting, Lindsay," he told her dispassionately. "Things have to change. We can't go back to the way things were before. It's not possible to rewind time, however much you might want to."

Well, that was cryptic, Lindsay thought as silence descended over them once more. Wrapping her arms defensively around her middle, she studied Danny's profile in the darkness as he negotiated his way through the late evening traffic. He'd changed, she realised. He wasn't the same man he was when they'd split up sixteen months ago. In Montana, he had been gentle and caring towards her. Now he was different. His outwardly compassionate exterior concealed a hard, brittle core…

She shook her head. No, that was unfair. He was just determined not to repeat past mistakes, that was all. He wasn't going to allow her to take the easy route. Simple forgiveness was not enough. They each had to prove themselves to the other. She apparently more than she realised if the rather pointed 'you' in Danny's last statement was anything to go by.

Feeling the renewed waves of tension emanating from the woman beside him, it was on the tip of Danny's tongue to apologise for his sharpness. He bit back the act of contrition however, knowing that it wouldn't do any good to ignore the reason behind it. He was still angry with her on some level. He couldn't pretend that resentment didn't exist. Whether she meant to or not, she'd driven a stake right through his heart when she'd shut down all lines of communication between them.

The pain he'd buried deep was rapidly rising to the surface, the words he needed to voice were clogging the back of his throat, but now wasn't the time for bringing them out into the open. It was too soon. The ties that held them together were tenuous at best. They needed to strengthen their renewed connection before they tested it. In her current frame of mind, Lindsay was likely to buckle under if he off-loaded everything he felt onto her in one go. Time enough for that later when she was stronger, when she could handle what it was that he had to say.

Ten, rather strained minutes later, he pulled into a parking spot just down the block from Stella's apartment building and the two of them exited the car by opposite doors – him to retrieve the luggage from the trunk and Lindsay to gather up their slumbering daughter in her arms. The silence lingered heavy and awkward between them as they then made their way up to Stella's apartment on the fifth floor. Once inside, Lindsay broke ranks and strode purposefully down the hallway to Lucy's bedroom.

Pulling back the comforter, she gently laid her sleeping daughter down on the mattress, and then turned to retrieve a nightdress from the chest of drawers in the corner. Kneeling down beside the bed, she proceeded to pull off her little girl's sneakers, socks and lavender-hued sweatpants before carefully manoeuvring her into a sitting position so that she could tug her t-shirt off over her head. Reaching behind her for the waiting nightdress, she was startled when it was placed directly into her outstretched hand.

Danny gazed at her silently, not knowing what to say. He hadn't intended for her homecoming to be fraught with such tension. Leaning forward, he lightly touched his lips to her forehead, and then wordlessly helped her finish getting Lucy settled for the night. Once their little girl was tucked up snugly in her bed, they headed back down the hallway to the living room to confront the inevitable fall-out from the rather uncomfortable exchange in the car.

"Lindsay I…" Danny began uncertainly, but was immediately cut off when she placed a finger over his lips to silence him.

"Don't," she whispered pleadingly. "Just hold me, okay?"

As he enveloped her in his arms and pulled her close, Lindsay finally let go of the emotions she'd been holding back since their reunion at the airport. Wrapping her arms around his back, she buried her face against his collarbone and allowed the tears to flow.

Hearing her quiet sobs, Danny closed his eyes as guilt overwhelmed him. Jesus! He hadn't meant to make her cry. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean…" he started and then faltered, unable to find the appropriate words to comfort her.

Pulling back from his embrace, Lindsay tilted her head back to look up into his face. "It's okay," she said, wiping away her tears with her fingertips. "You can't help what you feel anymore than I can, plus it's not that anyway."

She let out a deep sigh. "Now that we're back home again, we really have to do this, don't we?" she said. "And it's not going to be easy, is it?"

Her query was essentially rhetorical, but Danny answered it anyway. "No, it's not going to be easy," he agreed, "But if we want it enough…"

"And do you?" Lindsay interrupted earnestly. "Want it enough, I mean?"

Danny sighed. "What exactly is it that I have to say to convince you?" he asked plaintively.

Lindsay dropped her gaze. "I don't know, Danny, I really don't. I just know that I'm not quite there yet."

Danny nodded. "Just don't take too long to figure it out, okay?" he said, sliding a finger under her chin to lift her gaze back to his. "I understand that you have your issues to work through, but you can't use that as an excuse indefinitely. Things have to get better or what's the point to it all?"

Stroking his fingers through her hair, he leaned his forehead against hers. "You've gotta let me love you," he told her. "Loving me back is only half of the battle. You have to be brave enough to let me in too."

"I'm working on it," Lindsay assured him. "It's not easy, but I'm working on it, I promise you that."

Bridging the gap between them, they exchanged a series of soft, gentle kisses, the tender embrace a sweet avowal of better things to come. When they broke apart, Lindsay tucked her head under his chin and rested her cheek against his chest, calmed by the steady thump-thump of his heart under her ear and the lightly caressing fingers that he was trailing up and down her spine.

She didn't want him to leave, but she knew that he had to. Step by step, day by day, that was the way of it. Push things too far, too soon and it could all collapse like a house of cards. She was grateful for his patience. It couldn't be easy accepting her deep-seated doubts about his constancy. His past transgression may have added to her fears, but the root cause of them stemmed further back than that. He was paying not only for his own mistake, but for the sins of two others too.

"I should go," he told her quietly, but didn't move from where he stood.

"Mmm," she softly agreed, but only snuggled closer into his embrace.

He buried his face in her hair with a muted laugh. "You drive me crazy, you know that, huh?"

She tilted her head back to look up into his face. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" she asked.

"Kind of both. Sometimes I feel like I'm spinning in circles with you and never actually getting anywhere. Other times I don't know how I'd ever survive without you in my life."

Lindsay felt her lips curl up into a smile. "How very poetic," she teased.

Danny smiled down at her in return. "We okay?" he asked after a brief pause.

She nodded. "Yeah, we're okay," she replied. "Just…"

"Just what?"

"We've gotta talk about it, Danny," she told him seriously.

He nodded in sombre agreement. "Yeah, I know. Just not right now, huh?"

"My neuroses first?" she suggested with a faint smile.

He chuckled. "Something like that, I guess. We've made it through Level One, but there are a few more to go before we reach that part of the game."

"So what's on the agenda for Level Two?" Lindsay asked; using the same metaphor as he to enquire what came next for the two of them.

Danny shrugged. "I'm not sure yet to be honest. Let's just play it by ear for a while. Take each day as it comes, yeah?"

Lindsay nodded. "You working tomorrow?" she asked.

Danny shook his head. "No. I was kind of thinking we could take Lucy out for the day – maybe to Coney Island or something."

"Or we could be complete tourists and take her up the Empire State Building?" Lindsay suggested with a smile.

Danny wrinkled his nose. "At the weekend?" he said. "The queues will be right back to Montana."

Lindsay laughed. "I'm gonna make you take her one of these days," she said. "She lives in New York. Isn't it written into the constitution or something?"

"What? Thou shalt brave all the major tourist attractions of your birth-place?" Danny quipped dryly.

"I bet _you_ did," Lindsay pointed out.

"My fifth birthday," he told her proudly. "Louie thought it was lame, but as far as I was concerned it was the best day ever." He shrugged. "I was easily pleased at five."

"And you've not been up there since?" Lindsay asked.

"Well, yeah," Danny admitted sheepishly. "But for less altruistic reasons."

"Like what?"

"Women dig the whole 'Affair to Remember/Sleepless in Seattle' Valentine's Day thing," he told her with a wicked twinkle in his eye.

Lindsay laughed. "Isn't that a little too obvious?" she enquired.

Danny shrugged. "Not if you play it right."

"So how come you never pulled that move on me then?"

"Because you would have seen right through it," he told her. "And besides, a few shots, a game of pool and a hundred dollar bet and you're anybody's."

"Kidding!" he said, holding up his hands in mock surrender when Lindsay shoved him away from her in indignant protest.

"I should have made you wait," she told him huffily.

"Oh baby, trust me, you made me wait long enough," Danny replied, his voice thickening to molasses as he tugged her back towards him and bent his head to nuzzle at her neck.

Threading her fingers through his hair, Lindsay arched her throat to give him better access before her lips sought out his for a protracted and searing kiss. Overwhelmed by memories of their first time together, their embrace began to get a little overheated before it was interrupted by the timely sound of a key in the lock.

"Oops sorry!" Stella remarked with a grin as they sprang apart. "Bad timing, huh?"

"Ahh no, perfect timing actually," Danny replied, rubbing the back of his neck self-consciously. "It seems I have no will-power where this one is concerned," he said, nodding his head in Lindsay's direction.

"And that's a bad thing?" his colleague asked.

"Right now, it may not be such a sensible thing," he told her before he turned back to his wife. "I'll see you tomorrow, yeah? About 10 AM?"

Lindsay nodded. "Sounds good," she said.

"Okay then," Danny said, shifting uncomfortably. "I'll just…" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the door.

Stella tactfully moved out of ear-shot to give them a little privacy, but the awkwardness remained in spite of her withdrawal.

"Thanks for picking me and Lucy up at the airport," Lindsay said, resorting to small talk in lieu of something more meaningful.

"No problem." Danny returned just as ineffectually, and then shook his head with a wry smile. "How did we used to do this?" he asked. "Before a certain pool game I mean."

"Something like this, I think," Lindsay said softly. Stepping forward, she pulled his face down to hers for a gentle kiss. "Goodnight Messer," she murmured when she released him.

He cupped her cheek in his hand and rubbed his thumb over her lips. "Night Montana," he returned warmly, and then leaned in to steal another kiss before he finally turned for the door.

"Sorry for the interruption," Stella apologised after he'd left.

Lindsay waved that off. "It's your apartment, Stella. You're free to come and go as you please. Lucy and I are only guests here, remember?"

"Guests who are welcome to stay for as long as they like," her friend assured her as they exchanged a brief hug of greeting.

"Which from the looks of things won't be that much longer," she added with a knowing smile as she stepped back.

Lindsay sighed. "I wish it were that simple," she said as her friend curled up in her favourite armchair and she settled herself on the sofa opposite.

"But the two of you are back together, right?" Stella asked.

"We've agreed to try and work things out, but that doesn't mean we can. I'm hopeful, but there are no guarantees right now."

"But you still love each other, anybody can see that," Stella argued.

Lindsay smiled a little sadly. "I know, but sometimes that isn't enough, is it? Every time I think things are gonna be okay, something happens to throw that off. You saw what it was like between us just then – one minute we're comfortable in one another's company, the next we don't know what to say to each other."

"Maybe that's just because this means so much to both of you," Stella remarked shrewdly. "It's going to take time to re-establish your identity as a couple, Lindsay. You've been disconnected from each other for a long time now."

Lindsay nodded. "I know, I know. I guess that's what worries me. I know Danny still loves me, but he's also been involved with someone else while we've been apart and that's bound to affect things. It's not as if his relationship with Rachel was a complete disaster, was it?"

"Maybe not, but it wasn't right for him either," Stella replied. "Think about it. It took only the slight possibility of reconciliation with you for the two of them to call it quits."

"I think he still blames me for our split too," Lindsay said then, her eyes moist with emotion.

Stella sighed. "You hurt him, Lindsay," she pointed out bluntly. "He knew things weren't right, but he never wanted the two of you to separate. He wanted to work things out. But you never gave him - or yourself - the chance to do that."

"Don't you think I don't know that, Stella?" Lindsay said agitatedly. "I was just so focused on being strong, on doing the right thing for Lucy, it… It wasn't like I didn't care…"

"You just didn't allow yourself to," Stella finished for her.

Lindsay nodded. "I felt like I was going to fly apart at the seams. I shut Danny out because to open myself up to that was like diving into a black hole. I was afraid I'd lose myself in the darkness and never find my way back out again."

"So you decided it would be easier to be apart from him?"

"At the time, yes. It was only later when I realised that was a huge mistake. There were reasons for why I reacted the way I did though, Stella - reasons that don't have anything to do with Danny or our marriage. He knows that."

"And I would say that he understands that," Stella told her. "But that doesn't make his pain go away, does it?"

Lindsay looked down at her hands which she had laced together in her lap. "No, no, it doesn't," she agreed and then sighed. "He's holding back on me, Stella."

"Lindsay, he's worried about your emotional health. According to him, your depression is a lot more serious than you've let on."

Lindsay nodded. "I have a history of it," she admitted. "Danny didn't know that before, but he does now. It all came out while we were in Montana."

"And I think that's a lot for him to adjust to even if he is willing to support you through it. He's afraid of saying the wrong thing and pushing you over the edge."

"He told you that?" Lindsay enquired.

"In a roundabout kind of way, yeah," Stella replied. "And I don't think he's wrong in worrying about that. There's a delicate balance that the two of you have to find here. You've got to be honest with each other, but until you're feeling better, you need to tread carefully too."

"I'm not as fragile as I might seem, Stella," Lindsay said. "I'm not going to collapse in a heap at the slightest negative emotion from him."

"So tell him that, honey. Hawkes gave him some leaflets and stuff, but he needs to hear that kind of thing from you."

Lindsay frowned at that. "Leaflets?" she queried.

"Don't worry, he hasn't been broadcasting your personal business to all and sundry," Stella assured her. "He's confided in Mac and me, and I know he asked Hawkes for advice, but I think that's it… Hey, hey! Don't cry!"

Rising from her seat, she quickly crossed the floor-space to join Lindsay on the sofa. "Come on now," she murmured soothingly, curling an arm around her friend's shoulders and hugging her close.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Lindsay sniffled, choking back her tears. "It's just that everyone is being so understanding, and Danny… He's just so accepting of it all, you know?"

"And you thought he wouldn't be?"

"No, I…" She sighed. "There are men who haven't been before," she explained.

"Well, they weren't worth the effort then, were they?" Stella said matter-of-factly.

Lindsay let out a watery laugh at that. "I thought they were at the time."

"So now you know better," Stella remarked. "Here," she said, handing her a tissue to mop up her tears.

"Thanks," Lindsay replied, taking it from her.

"You're welcome, honey," Stella returned. "Now, how about I go and make us some hot chocolate, hey?" she suggested, "Comfort food at its best, don't you think?"

"Not to mention the perfect accompaniment to ex-boyfriend bashing," she added with a sly wink.

Lindsay giggled. "You know what? I think that's exactly what I need right now," she said. "You're a good friend, Stella."

"The best," Stella agreed with aplomb. "Oh and one more thing," she said, turning back as she headed for the kitchen.

"What's that?" Lindsay asked.

Stella smiled. "Welcome home, kiddo."

_**To be continued…**_


	20. Ground Rules

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi! New chapter for you. It's a page or so shorter than usual, but I wouldn't have been ready to post this today - already a day later than I was aiming for - if I'd extended it into the next scene, which I think belongs in Chapter 21 anyway.

I hope this update's worth the long wait by the way. It's a bit of a set-up chapter for the next few parts so it's not overly eventful, I'm afraid.

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 20 – Ground Rules**_

Heading into work for her shift on Monday morning, Lindsay was somewhat surprised to discover how nervous she was. She'd been away from the Lab for almost a month, but in many ways it seemed like much longer.

Everything was different now and it was proving to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, she was so much happier in herself than she had been a few weeks ago. On the other, she no longer felt so in control of her life. Admitting her depression was almost like giving into it, you see. She may have been deeply unhappy before, but the denial of just how bad things had gotten had provided her with a false sense of security nonetheless.

Now she had to face up to and deal with the mistakes that she'd made in her marriage, and there was no guarantee of a happy conclusion. She had Danny back in her life, but for how long, she wondered. What would happen if they couldn't work things out? Would they find a way to remain friends or would they end up even more estranged than before? It was a scary thought and one which Lindsay didn't allow herself to dwell upon too much.

Drawing level with the building that housed the NYC Crime Scene Investigation Unit, she stood uncertainly on the sidewalk, trying to gather the necessary courage to go in. It felt like her first day again. Back then she'd been nervous, excited and concerned about whether she'd fit in or not. This was New York and she was an inexperienced country girl from Montana. She'd had no idea how she would adapt to life in the City that Never Sleeps.

Now, years later, it was home. She was married to a born-and-bred New Yorker and their little daughter was more accustomed to high-rise buildings and wall-to-wall traffic than the mountains and wheat-fields of her mother's birthplace…

"Whatcha thinking so deeply about?"

"Danny!" Lindsay was startled out of her reverie when her husband's familiar arms encircled her from behind. "What are you doing here?"

"I work here, remember?"

"But I thought you were on the late shift," she said, twisting slightly in his arms so that she could look him in the face.

"I was – but I switched shifts with Hawkes so that I could come with you to your doctor's appointment tomorrow," he explained.

"Oh," she replied, not knowing what to say to that.

Danny tightened his arms around her as he sensed her discomfort. "You didn't answer my question," he prompted.

"I'm err… I guess I'm kinda nervous," she reluctantly admitted.

Danny brushed a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. "About what?" he asked.

"About returning to work," she answered. "I've been away for nearly a month and everything's changed while I've been gone."

"The Lab's still the same as it ever was, Linds," Danny told her.

"But we aren't, are we?" she said, and then sighed. "It's like I've been living in a vacuum ever since we split," she explained. "I've been putting one foot in front of the other because I had to, but the outside world has been locked out for the most part. Now that bubble has burst and it's all noise, colour and confusion again. It's a lot to take in."

Danny touched tender lips to her temple. "Surely it's better to live than simply exist though?" he remarked.

"Yes," Lindsay agreed, "But scary all the same." She let out a nervous laugh. "I feel like the new girl again," she said, "Like everyone's going to be watching me, assessing whether I'm up to the job or not."

"It was never like that," Danny protested mildly.

"It wasn't?" Lindsay said, fixing her gaze pointedly on his. "All those mocking asides, getting me to call Mac 'Sir' - even though you knew he hated it – that wasn't about testing me?"

Still holding her loosely within his embrace, Danny shook his head. "Nah! I just thought you were hot," he claimed with typical nonchalance.

Lindsay giggled. "You so did not!" she retorted, "Not immediately anyway."

"Oh yeah, and how would you know what I was thinking, Miss Monroe?" he responded teasingly.

"Because I know you," she replied. Clutching the labels of his blue shirt in her fingers, she stood on her tip-toes and brought her face level with his. "It was definitely a test, but you ended up liking what it revealed and that surprised you."

She could read him like a book, Danny thought as he recalled the highly inappropriate rush of attraction he'd felt towards her after less than a week of working with her. He'd sublimated it because it was unprofessional and ill-advised, and yet he'd still persisted in bantering with her at every available opportunity, telling himself that he was just being friendly to a new colleague…

"You got under my skin," he admitted with an affected shrug.

"Well, you got under mine so I guess that makes us even, huh?" Lindsay said, leaning in to feather her lips over his.

Settling the palms of his hands into the small of her back, Danny pulled her closer for a more thorough embrace. "How did we ever lose that?" he murmured when he drew back.

Keeping her arms locked loosely around his neck, Lindsay shrugged. "We got careless," she said. "We made Lucy the centre of everything and forgot about the fact that we needed to hold on to each other too."

Danny nodded, knowing she was right. Their relationship had been shaky and they'd strengthened it with Lucy and the familial bond that she'd created for them, rather than confront the painful consequences of his infidelity. It was almost as if that by wiping the slate clean and starting again, those troubles would disappear into the ether, never to return. But they had lingered, hovering in the background like some unseen wraith, until events had spiralled out of control and their once easy relationship had splintered into several disconnect pieces.

He nuzzled his face intimately into her hair. "I never want to lose that again," he murmured in her ear.

Lindsay's heart stuttered at the depth of emotion that she could hear in his words. It was all there in spades – enduring love, profound regret as well as a spark of renewed hope for their future.

Tightening her arms around his neck, she hugged him close. "Me neither," she assured him, "And that's the first step isn't it? Wanting the same thing?"

Danny nodded. "As is facing it together," he said, gently disentangling himself from her embrace and holding out his hand. "Shall we?" he said, nodding at the building across the street.

Lindsay smiled as she laced her fingers through his. "With an offer like that how could I refuse?"

Their hands entwined, they crossed the street and entered the building together, only temporarily releasing each other's grasp when they went through the security gate in the Lobby.

"Well that established us as gossip fodder for the next week at least," Lindsay commented dryly as they stashed their things in their respective lockers a few minutes later.

Danny laughed. "So what else is new?"

"Don't you think we should have been a little more discrete under the circumstances?"

"Under what circumstances?" Danny asked confusedly.

"We don't know whether we can make this work yet, Danny," Lindsay replied, "And what if it gets back to Rachel? Surely you don't want her to find out about us over the NYPD grapevine?"

Danny sighed. "No of course not," he said, his expression pained, "Which is why I've already told her."

"You have?" Lindsay was somewhat surprised by that. "When?"

"On Friday," Danny answered. "I promised her that I wouldn't keep her hanging on indefinitely. I wasn't going to break my word. She deserves that much respect from me at the very least."

Lindsay's stomach cramped unpleasantly at the honest sentiment behind those words. In the euphoria of their renewed commitment to each other, she'd forgotten that he hadn't actually broken up with Rachel permanently, that they'd simply agreed to take a break while he figured out what he wanted. All right so he'd eventually decided to give their marriage another shot, but that didn't take away from the fact that she hadn't been his only option. That was a difficult thing for her to accept, even though she knew that she had essentially driven him into Rachel's arms in the first place with her obstinate pursuit of a divorce that he'd never wanted.

"Don't do that," Danny urged quietly, reading this on her face. "We can't change what was, don't let it interfere with what will be. I love _you_, okay? I cared about Rachel, I'm not going to deny that, but it wasn't love. She made me feel good about myself at a time when my life felt so hollow and empty."

Lindsay nodded, her gaze downcast. "I know I have no right to condemn you for that, but it's hard, you know? Accepting that you were with someone else while we were apart."

"Lindsay – if you'd given me even the slightest hint that reconciliation was possible, I wouldn't have travelled down that road, believe me," Danny assured her. "But you were adamant it was over, that was no going back for us, and I needed to find a way to move on. I needed to feel like I was worth something again because you made me feel so..."

"Made you feel so what?" Lindsay demanded when he trailed off.

Danny shook his head. "This isn't the time for this."

"And you call me closed off," Lindsay retorted irritably.

Danny sighed. "No – we're both guilty of that, but there's a time and a place even so."

"And when is that time and place, huh? Sometime never, maybe?"

"Somewhere away from the Lab and sometime after your doctor's appointment tomorrow," Danny said with a note of finality in his voice.

Lindsay let out a weary sigh. "You don't have to treat me like cut-glass, you know. I hate being painted as the victim all the time. You are one of the few people in my life who doesn't judge me that way. Please don't start now; I don't think I could take it."

"It's not a case of judging you, Lindsay. It's just that I… I want to do what's right, okay? I want to do what's best for your health, for us, for everything. I guess I'm struggling to get the balance right, but I'll figure it out eventually. It's just gonna take me some time."

"Did you read the literature Hawkes gave you?" Lindsay asked.

"Yeah but…" Danny stopped and frowned. "How did you know about that?"

"Stella mentioned it," Lindsay told him.

"And does that bother you?" he enquired cautiously.

"What that Stella mentioned it or that you talked to Hawkes?" Lindsay asked.

Danny shrugged. "Both, I guess."

Lindsay sighed. "I'd definitely have a problem if you disclosed my personal business to anyone who would listen, but the fact that you talked to a few close friends about it doesn't bother me. I know that living with someone who suffers from depression is not the easiest thing to cope with. You're going to need support too, and Hawkes is the obvious person to provide that."

Danny nodded. "He said I should talk to your doctor, be as involved as possible so that I can understand what you're going through. He reckons there are support groups for spouses too."

Lindsay's lips twisted ironically. "What? 'My name is Danny Messer and my wife's a basket-case'?" she suggested lightly.

"Lindsay!" Danny protested. "It's not a joke."

"No, I know, but you have to laugh sometimes. Take life too seriously and it'll drag you down before you know it. It's been a hard lesson to learn, but it's one I try to live by. It helps put things into perspective for me."

Reaching out, she took his hands in hers. "Look, I know you want to support me and I'm grateful for that," she told him earnestly. "But don't make it into more than it is. I'm having a hard time right now, but it won't always be that way. My depression is usually brought on by adverse circumstances; it's not something that I suffer from all the time. It's going to be part of our lives, but only a very small part in the grand scheme of things. We shouldn't let it define everything that we are together, that's giving it more credence than it's worth."

Danny nodded. "Yeah, I know, I'm sorry. It's just taking some getting used to that's all. If I'd known about it before, maybe I would have handled things differently, tried harder to get through to you instead of just accepting the fait accompli. I don't want to make the same mistake twice."

"You won't," Lindsay assured him, "And it was my fault not yours. I should have confided in you instead of hiding that part of myself behind closed doors."

"We've both got a few things to learn about communication, huh?" Danny said.

Lindsay nodded. "Yes we have," she concurred. "And we've made a really good start in addressing that. That's why you _have_ to talk to me, Danny - it's not going to work if you're afraid to be honest with me about your feelings. No relationship can sustain that kind of inequality. It is okay to be angry with me, you know. I might get upset, but I won't break in two."

"All right," Danny relented. "I get what you're saying, I do, but I need to be sure that your illness is properly under control before we go there, okay babe? Your Mom thought your medication needed adjusting, so let's just see what the doctor has to say tomorrow and take it from there, all right?"

"Okay," Lindsay agreed, glad that she'd found the courage to confront him about his continuing reticence. This couldn't just be about her and her issues. They had to tear down all the walls that divided them if they were to rebuild themselves a solid and sustainable home.

She glanced at her watch. "I should get going," she said. "I've got an appointment with Mac at nine." Placing a hand flat against his chest, she lifted up on her toes to kiss him lightly on the lips. "Wish me luck."

"It'll be fine," he assured her when they broke apart.

"I hope so," Lindsay said nervously. "I can't help having a bad feeling though. Getting summoned by the boss - it's rarely a good thing."

"When it's me, yeah," Danny said wryly, making her smile in spite of her trepidation. "But with you, I think that's less likely so stop worrying."

"The Department could put me on enforced medical leave, Danny," Lindsay pointed out as they left the locker-room and walked side by side down the corridor towards Mac's office.

"If that were the case, Mac wouldn't have waited until you were back on shift to tell you," Danny told her.

"I guess not," Lindsay concurred a little dubiously.

"Well, there's only one way to find out," Danny suggested, nodding towards the glass-walled office. He stroked a gentle hand over her hair. "I'll be here if you need me, okay?"

"Thanks," Lindsay said, reaching out to squeeze his hand before resolutely squaring her shoulders and turning for the door.

Mac lifted his head from his computer screen at her light knock, ushering her inside with an authoritative crook of his fingers. "Sit down, Lindsay," he said, waving her towards the sofa as he rose from his chair and moved around the other side of the desk, deliberately keeping the atmosphere as informal as possible.

He shot a speculative glance at Danny out in the corridor. "Do you want him here for this?" he asked.

Lindsay shook her head determinedly. "No, no, I'm okay."

It was one thing to rely on her husband for support on a personal level, but she valued her independence as a woman too and her career was her own business. It would be unprofessional to have him there to speak for her in this respect.

"There's no need to be unduly concerned," Mac began in a soothing tone, perching on the edge of his desk, "But I'd be failing in my duty as your boss – and your friend – if I ignored the current situation."

"My depression, you mean," Lindsay said, meeting the thorny issue head on. There wasn't any point denying it, was there?

Mac nodded. "As it hasn't significantly affected your work, it's my call on how we should proceed," he went on. "Now, I could recommend that you get evaluated by the department psychologist, but I don't think we need to resort to that. We simply need to set a few basic ground-rules."

"What kind of ground-rules?"

"I'll be putting you on modified assignment for the next few weeks. I don't want you out in the field so you'll stay at the Lab for the time being. We'll re-evaluate the situation as and when necessary – I'll set up a regular weekly appointment for us to discuss it. Does that sound fair to you?"

"I haven't really got much choice in the matter, have I?"

"No," Mac said. "I'm willing to work with you on this, Lindsay, but I won't jeopardise the efficiency of this department or the safety of its staff."

"Yes, I know. I understand, I'm sorry. I guess I just want everything to be normal again."

"But it isn't yet, is it?" Mac gently pointed out. "You've been through a lot this last year so give yourself a break, okay? I have every faith in you in case I've not made that clear enough. If I didn't, I wouldn't be keeping this in-house."

"I know, Mac," Lindsay said. "And I'm grateful for that, I really am."

"Good." Mac nodded with satisfaction. "Now about you and Danny – are you comfortable working together again, or would it be easier on you both if I kept you apart for the time being?"

"I… umm… I guess we might need a little distance every once in a while," Lindsay said, "But we also need to figure out how to make this work on every level and our professional life is a big part of that."

"Plus, I miss working with him," she continued with a smile. "He always was my favourite partner. No offence intended by the way," she added as an afterthought.

Mac laughed. "None taken."

"You need to speak to Danny as well though," Lindsay went on. "He has to be on board with this too."

Mac nodded. "I know, and I've already discussed it with him. He pretty much said the same thing as you so I guess that's our answer. Why don't you go and find him? He has a couple of cases on the go and Adam's spread pretty thin at the moment so I'm sure there's plenty for you to do."

"Okay," Lindsay said, rising to her feet. "Oh and Mac?" She turned back as she reached the door.

"Yes?" Mac looked at her enquiringly.

"Thanks," she said softly.

He smiled. "No problem," he told her easily. "Now get back to work, soldier," he instructed.

"Yes captain." Lindsay turned on her heel with a smart salute.

Mac watched her go with a thoughtful expression on his face, and then relaxed his stern features into a warm smile as Stella appeared in the doorway.

"She take it, okay?" she asked him.

Mac inclined his head. "I think she accepted it as inevitable," he said.

"We'll keep an eye on her, Mac, but trust me, she's going to be fine," Stella assured him, "She's a tough little cookie when it comes down to it."

"I know," he agreed. "How does she seem to you?"

"Since she got back from Montana, you mean?"

Mac nodded in reply.

"Better I would say," Stella answered. "Her emotions are a little more on the surface, but I don't think that's such a bad thing. She was walking around like a bit of a zombie before she left, but she seems a lot more connected with the real world now."

"And Danny?"

"Well, he picked her and Lucy up from the airport on Saturday, they spent the day together yesterday, and I just saw them arrive together today so I would say things are starting to get back on track. They seem a little tentative and awkward with each other at times, but that's perfectly understandable. They'll figure it out, and if they don't, I'll just bash their stubborn heads together until they do."

Mac laughed. "I don't doubt you will," he said with a grin, and then reached for his cell when it began to beep insistently at him.

"You want to take a trip out to Queens?" he enquired, glancing down at the display. "Triple homicide, looks like a bodega robbery gone south."

"I'll get my kit," Stella replied without hesitation.

**OOOOOO**

_**Later **__**the same day…**_

"You nearly done?" Danny enquired from the doorway.

"Almost," Lindsay glanced up from the Trace report that she was typing up. "We've not really got much to go on," she said critically. "There's nothing out of the ordinary here."

"We'll go over all the evidence again tomorrow," Danny said, coming further into the room. "If we look at everything as a whole, maybe something'll jump out at us that we missed before."

"Maybe," Lindsay capitulated, although she didn't sound all that convinced about it.

"But that's tomorrow," Danny told her firmly, leaning over her shoulder to close the report she'd just saved. "Your shift finished half an hour ago and I'm taking you out for something to eat before we head home."

"You are?" Lindsay said, as he proceeded to shut down her computer for her as well.

"Uh-huh," Danny told her decisively. He waggled his eyebrows at her. "Resistance is futile, little girl," he said in a cackling tone. "I have ways and means of making you agree."

Lindsay laughed. "I think you've been watching a few too many superhero movies, Mr Messer," she said.

Danny shrugged. "Well, it sure beats 'Dora the Explorer' and 'The Little Mermaid' – I need something to re-establish my shattered masculinity, don't I?"

Lindsay's eyes took a long leisurely trip over his lean, muscular form. "Doesn't seem to be in too much doubt to me," she remarked, her gaze frank with womanly approval.

Danny grinned, leaning in close to plant a sound kiss on her bowed lips. "You really don't want to be looking at me like that, Montana," he drawled, his voice as smooth as molasses.

"I don't?" Lindsay asked airily and then laughed. "What about Lucy?" she enquired, getting back to the point after the flirtatious detour.

"I called the babysitter," Danny said. "She's staying on until Stella gets back - who's on her way home now."

Lindsay's forehead creased into a slight frown. "It means I won't get to see her before she goes to bed," she said.

Danny sighed. "Lindsay - she's going to be having so much fun with Stella; she won't even notice you're gone. Plus, she's just had your undivided attention for over three weeks so you're hardly depriving her."

"Yes, I know but…"

"But nothing – it's what we agreed, right? To make time to spend with each other? Alone and uninterrupted?"

Lindsay nodded. "Yes, we did. I'm sorry. It's just that she's been my only care for a long time now."

"And what about the nights when she was with me?" Danny asked. "What did you do then?"

"Worked mostly."

"But you must have gone out sometimes."

Lindsay stared at him incredulously. "With who exactly?" she said.

"Well – friends," Danny said, frowning a little as realisation began to dawn.

"What friends?" Lindsay shook her head. "All my friends were your friends first. I wouldn't say they took sides exactly, but they couldn't really invite me along when you and your new girlfriend were going to be there, could they? I don't blame them for that, it was just circumstances, but it did kind of leave me out in the cold most of the time."

"Lindsay…"

"And when did you think I'd find the time to meet new people, huh? With my job and Lucy to raise?" Tears sparked in her eyes. "You really have no idea, do you? And yeah, I know, I brought it all on myself so who am I to complain, right? It's nothing more than I deserved."

She rose agitatedly to her feet, wringing her hands anxiously and swiping angrily at the tears on her cheeks. "I can't do this," she declared. "I have to… I just… I want to go home."

She took off towards the locker-room before Danny could prevent her, nimbly dodging around him with a speed that surprised him. He followed quickly in her wake, blocking her exit when she tried to escape.

"Stop!" he said firmly, caging her against the lockers with both his hands. Curling a hand around the back of her head, he drew her against him. "Just stop," he said, his tone gentler. "Nobody deserves that kind of loneliness."

Lindsay's breath hitched before she relented and relaxed against him, the tension in her body replaced by a sudden weariness.

"I'm sorry, I never realised," Danny continued. "I suppose I should have done, but I had issues of my own to deal with at the time."

"I felt so alone." The lament was so plaintive that his heart squeezed painfully inside his chest.

"I know, baby, I know, but you're not alone now, okay?"

Lindsay lifted her tear-streaked face from his chest. "But what if…?"

She broke off as he placed a finger over her lips and shook his head. "No what ifs," he decreed. "We focus on the here and now; we don't worry about what might be."

"I don't blame you, you know," Lindsay told him, her voice gaining strength. "It was a situation of my own making. I guess that's what made it so hard. Knowing that I only had myself to blame for the way I was feeling."

Framing her face in his hands, he kissed her, slow and sweet. "We need to talk about what went wrong," he said, "But I don't think we should get caught up in the blame game. We both had our part to play, let's just leave it at that. It's time we moved on."

Lindsay nodded and then forced a tentative smile. "So where you taking me?" she asked.

He grinned at her. "It's a surprise."

"Well, as surprises go," she remarked twenty minutes later when they reached their destination. "This one's…"

"Pretty lame?" he filled in for her as their waitress led them to a booth in the corner and then left them alone to peruse the menu.

Lindsay looked around the dimly lit diner. "No, I like it," she said with a smile. "It's very you."

"You mean it lacks even an ounce of sophistication?" Danny quipped.

Lindsay laughed. "You're selling yourself short."

Danny shrugged. "The burgers are good, and you get proper table-cloths." He stroked his palm over the pristine white cotton in front of him.

"And candles too," Lindsay said, nodding to the stubby piece of wax jammed into the neck of a coloured glass bottle. She eyed him quizzically. "Did you ever bring Rachel here?"

Danny shook his head. "No, I've been a couple of times with Antonio and Kirsten since it opened for business six months ago," he said, referring to his cousin and his wife. "Kirsten knows the owner – an old college friend apparently." He looked about. "I liked the atmosphere and it…"

He broke off and bit his bottom lip. "My first thought was that you would love it," he confessed. "And I couldn't get away from that. That's why I couldn't bring Rachel. It didn't seem right."

Lindsay reached across the table and slipped her fingers into his. "Thank-you," she said simply.

"For what?"

"For keeping some things sacred even though you didn't have any reason to."

"I had a reason, Lindsay," Danny said, absently turning her hand over and trailing a light finger over her palm. "I never quite managed to get you out of my heart, however hard I tried. I just locked you away as part of my past so that I could make the most of my future. You taught me what it was to be part of a committed relationship, and I wanted to find that again. I couldn't go back to the bachelor boy lifestyle I had before. It seemed so empty after us."

Lindsay graced him with a soft smile. "I'm not sure what to say to that," she said.

Danny smiled. "You don't have to say anything. It's not something that requires a response. So – have you decided what you want?" he said, releasing her hand and picking up his menu again.

"You," she said.

He grinned. "I don't think I'm on the menu, babe."

"No, you're definitely an item on the specials board," she declared.

"You have to pay extra for those," he reminded her.

"So what's it gonna cost me?" she asked archly.

Shooting her a calculated look, Danny rose from his seat, cupped the nape of her neck in his hand and leaned across the table to murmur something in her ear.

Lindsay's eyes widened. "Interesting," she said. "Is that even possible?"

Danny grinned as he sat back down. "No harm in trying," he said.

Lindsay laughed. "It's a good job my Dad doesn't know how much you've corrupted me," she remarked, blushing pink with belated modesty.

Danny suppressed a smile. "You're cute when you get all coy," he said.

"Stop it!" she protested when he continued to eye her rosy cheeks with unconcealed amusement.

He laughed. "I love you, you know that right?"

Lindsay's expression softened into unequivocal tenderness. "I'm beginning to get the picture," she said quietly.

"Good." Danny nodded with satisfaction, his blue eyes intent on hers. "Now let's eat, shall we? I'm starved."

_**To be continued…**_

_**A/N2: **__the restaurant in the last scene is supposed to be an upmarket diner, serving posh junk food. Something I thought would be very Danny and Lindsay. I cooked it up out of my imagination although for all I know somewhere like that could very well exist in New York. _

_Oh and I've left what Danny suggested to Lindsay to your imaginations because I __don't think it's suitable for a T-rated story! LOL!_

_Till next ti__me then__ – CharmedBec x_


	21. The Next Step

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hey all! New chapter for you. Still a two week gap, I'm afraid, but I managed Saturday this week which is a slight improvement! Anyway, hope you enjoy.

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 21 – The Next Step**_

_**The following morning…**_

"Lucy honey – do you want PB&J, or ham and cheese in your sandwich today?" Lindsay asked her daughter from her position at the kitchen counter.

"Ham and cheese, peese, Mommy," Lucy replied from where she was sitting at the nearby table, eating a plate of cut-up sausages and hash-browns.

"Okay, ham and cheese it is," Lindsay said, adding a couple of slices of the wafer-thin meat and a handful of grated cheese to the buttered bread.

"Are you taking me to pre-school today?" Lucy asked her mother around a mouthful of her breakfast.

"Don't speak with your mouth full, honey, it's rude," Lindsay automatically admonished her. "And yes – Mommy is taking you to pre-school today," she went on, as she completed her daughter's lunchtime sandwich and deftly cut it into triangular quarters. "I don't have to go to work until later."

Suitably reminded of her manners, Lucy took care to swallow the piece of sausage she was eating before speaking again. "Why not?" she asked.

"Because Uncle Mac said I didn't have to," Lindsay told her, knowing that this explanation would suffice.

She'd rather Lucy didn't know about her doctor's appointment that morning. Her little girl associated a trip to the doctor's with being sick, and although technically that was true, depression wasn't the type of illness a four year old could really understand so it was best that she was kept ignorant of the situation for the time being.

"Oh, okay," Lucy said affably. "Am I staying at Daddy's tonight?" she asked after a few more forkfuls of her breakfast.

Lindsay nodded. "Yes – Shelley's going to pick you up from pre-school, but Daddy will fetch you later when he finishes work."

It seemed strange to be handing Lucy over to Danny's care in the wake of everything that had happened in the past few weeks. It was an unpleasant reminder of a situation that had not yet fully resolved itself. Despite the progress they'd made in patching up their shattered relationship, they were still living by the terms of their separation agreement - sharing formal custody of their child rather than caring for her as one homogenous whole.

Lindsay still went to bed at night alone. She still woke up to the sound and smells of the New York City streets rather than the rhythmic cadence of her husband's even breathing and his earthy masculine scent. And Danny still had to ring the doorbell to be let in, she thought on hearing the distinctive jangle from the other room. Leaving Lucy in the kitchen, she went to answer the door.

"Morning," Danny greeted her with a smile as he stepped over the threshold. He stooped to lightly peck her on the lips, and then straightened up again. "Do I smell sausage and egg?" he enquired eagerly.

"Didn't you already have breakfast?" Lindsay asked him.

"Yeah, but there's always room for more," he said, patting his toned abs for emphasis.

Lindsay smiled. "One day the gym's not gonna be enough to work off all those extra calories," she warned him, reaching out to poke him lightly in the stomach.

Danny shrugged. "One day maybe, but that day isn't today so I may as well make the most of it," he reasoned.

"I swear you're like a human garbage disposal sometimes," Lindsay remarked with an indulgent shake of her head.

"Throwing away perfectly good food is sacrilegious, Lindsay," he told her sanctimoniously as he followed her through into the kitchen. "There are people in this world who are starving, you know."

"Daddy!" Lucy's face lit up like a sunbeam at his unexpected presence.

"Hey munchkin!" he said, affectionately ruffling her hair and dropping a kiss to the crown of her blonde head.

"What are you doing here?" Lucy asked him. "Mommy said you weren't picking me up until after Shelley fetched me from pre-school."

"Ah well, I was in the neighbourhood," Danny said easily, taking note of the warning look that Lindsay cast in his direction. "So I thought I'd drop by to say hello."

"Cool!" Lucy declared. "Can you take me to pre-school too?" she asked, "You and Mommy together?"

"Don't see why not," Danny agreed as he sat down at the table opposite her.

"Yay!" was his little daughter's effervescent response.

Danny smiled. "We don't have to go yet though, do we? Mommy's offered to cook breakfast for me," he said, shooting a sly, sidelong glance at his wife.

Lindsay laughed in spite of herself. "You don't give up, do you?" she said, reaching out to cuff him up-side the head. "You're like a dog with a bone when you want something."

Danny grinned irreverently at her. "Good thing I want you then, huh?" he said, a hint of tenderness softening his tone.

"Don't do that," Lindsay berated him as she felt the tears well up in response. Blinking back the salty wetness, she set about making Danny's breakfast to distract herself.

Her husband wasn't about to let her get away that easily though. Rising from his seat, he crossed to join her at the counter. Wrapping his arms around her waist from behind, he pressed a tender kiss to her temple as she cracked a couple of eggs into a bowl and began to whisk them with a fork. "You okay?" he asked in a low voice so that Lucy wouldn't overhear.

"I'm fine," she assured him, and then shook her head at her too instinctive denial of her feelings. "I guess I'm a bit nervous," she amended.

"Why?"

"Because I…" She broke off and bit her lip. "Because I know my Mom is right – I know I probably need my medication adjusting, but I don't want to be put on too strong a dose. I don't like the way the pills make me feel."

"Lindsay, I'm no doctor, but you don't seem that out of whack to me. It's probably just going to be a small adjustment."

"I hope so." Lindsay shot him a tight smile as she moved to put the sausages under the grill.

"Are you sure you're okay with me being there?" he asked her as he lit the gas under the pan for the eggs.

Lindsay hesitated before replying. "Yes but… would you mind waiting outside to begin with? I need to be honest about the way I'm feeling, but it's going to be difficult to express that properly with you there. It's not that I don't trust you with that knowledge. It's just that…"

"Our situation is very much a factor in where you are emotionally right now?" Danny finished for her.

Lindsay nodded, grateful for his understanding. "I know there are two sides to every story, but it has to be about my side initially. We can talk with Doctor Quinn about how it affects us as a couple afterwards."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Danny concurred.

Moving behind him, Lindsay curled her arms around his waist. "Thank-you," she murmured, resting her forehead between his shoulder-blades for a moment.

"Any time, babe," Danny responded, reaching down to squeeze her hand.

Releasing him from her grasp, Lindsay turned to address their daughter while Danny melted the butter in the pan for his scrambled eggs. "Have you had enough?" she asked, noting that Lucy was now playing with the remnants of the food on her plate rather than eating it.

Her daughter nodded. "Yes, I full now, Mommy. I don't have to eat it all, do I?" she asked, her eyes pleading for her mother's acquiescence.

Assessing what was left and determining that enough sustenance had made its way into her little girl's stomach, Lindsay relented. "No honey, you don't have to eat it all," she said, "But drink up the rest of your milk, yeah? You want to be healthy and strong, don't you?"

Lucy nodded vigorously, and then curled her palms around her cup of milk and drained what was left of the creamy liquid in several, big gulps. "I finished now, Mommy," she declared as she set the cup back down on the table with a clatter.

"So I see," Lindsay said, smiling at the milk moustache that now rimmed the little girl's mouth. "Now - why don't you and I go wash our faces and brush our teeth while Daddy cooks and eats his breakfast, huh?" she said, holding out her hand as Lucy clambered down from her chair.

"Eat fast, Daddy," Lucy instructed him peremptorily, slipping her fingers into her mother's offered hand. "Miss Benson won't like it if we're late."

"Aye, aye captain!" he returned with a smart salute, making her giggle.

Half an hour later, the three of them set out to walk the couple of blocks to Lucy's pre-school. Wrapped up warmly against the autumnal chill, Lucy skipped happily along between her parents, singing some kind of nursery song that Danny couldn't quite make out the words of. He glanced across at Lindsay and was shocked to see tears glistening on her cheeks.

"Hey," he said soothingly. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing, I'm fine." Lindsay dashed away her tears with her free hand. "It's just that I missed this, you know?" she said. "The three of us – doing normal, everyday family stuff together. This is how it's meant to be and we haven't had that for so long now."

Danny nodded. "I know. I guess we have a lot of lost time to make up for, huh?"

"We can't get back what we've already lost, Danny."

"No, I know, but dwelling on it isn't going to change anything, is it? We need to put the past behind us and focus on where we go from here."

Lindsay nodded, looked like she was going to say more before apparently deciding against it. "What are you singing, sweetheart?" she enquired of Lucy instead. "I don't think I've heard that song before."

"Aunt Annabel teached it me," her daughter told her. "I'm gonna sing it for Miss Benson, but I gotta practise first."

Lindsay smiled. "That's nice; I'm sure Miss Benson will like that."

Lucy's eyes lit up. "Do you fink I'll get a gold star?" she asked.

"Well, I don't know," her Mom replied. "You'll have to wait and see, won't you?"

Fifteen minutes later, they delivered their excited little daughter to the classroom door, where she greeted her teacher like she hadn't seen her in six months rather than a mere three weeks. "Hi, Miss Benson! Hi! I'm back! I'm back!"

"Hello Lucy," Miss Benson said with a bright smile. "Did you have a good vacation?"

"Yes!" the little girl replied, enthusiastically bouncing on the balls of her feet like a released Jack-in-a-box. "Me and Mommy went to stay with Grams and Gramps in Montana and we had a big party cus they got married and all my cousins came to play with me. And then Daddy came to visit as well, and me and Grams and Gramps stayed in a cabin in the mountains, and we baked cakes for the sick babies too!"

"Well, that certainly seems like a full schedule," Miss Benson replied when her pupil was finally forced to pause for breath. "I expect it was lots of fun, huh?"

"Lots and lots!" Lucy agreed before changing the subject. "Both Mommy _and_ Daddy brought me to pre-school today, Miss Benson," she told her teacher proudly.

"So I see."

"It's 'cus they're boyfriend and girlfriend now, but Daddy's not coming back home yet, not until he and Mommy decide to be married again. They're friends now and don't fight no more, but they have to be best friends before we can all live in the same 'partment again."

"Well, that sounds like a very sensible plan," Miss Benson replied solemnly. "Now why don't you go with Mrs Mapplin and she'll help you hang up your coat? And then maybe you can help Jessica with her tea-party?"

"Okay," Lucy agreed amiably. "Bye Mommy! Bye Daddy!" she said brightly before scampering off.

"I don't think she's quite learnt the art of discretion yet," Danny commented dryly after a slightly awkward pause.

Miss Benson nodded. "It's best that we're informed of any change in personal circumstances," she told them, drawing them off to one side so that their conversation wasn't overheard by the other parents waiting in line to deliver their children to pre-school. "It can disrupt a child's routine so it's preferable that we're made aware of the situation so that we can make allowances for that."

"I don't know how much she really understands," Lindsay said. "I'm not sure where she got the friends/best friends' theory from to be honest. It's not something that's come from us."

"So what _have_ you told her?"

"That Mommy and Daddy want to be together, but that we have lots of talking to do first so that we don't fight like we did before…"

Pausing in her narrative, Lindsay exchanged a brief look with Danny and then sighed. "We don't know whether we can make it work yet," she explained to their daughter's pre-school teacher. "We told her that we're going to be boyfriend and girlfriend for now, and that Danny will only move back in if we decide that we want to be married again. It seemed like the simplest way to explain it to her."

Miss Benson nodded in understanding. "It seems like she's understood as much as it's possible for a four year old to understand of these things," she reassured them. "You should probably keep talking to her though. She may need to be reminded that her father moving back in is not necessarily a guaranteed thing. It would be all too easy for her to come to expect it, especially if the three of you start to do things together as a family unit again."

Danny nodded. "We'll keep that in mind," he said. "But we should let you get on." He placed a hand in the small of Lindsay's back, ready to steer her away.

"All right, but if there is anything you're worried about with regard to Lucy then please feel free to call and make an appointment to see me," Miss Benson said.

Lindsay nodded. "We will and thank-you."

"You're welcome and good luck, okay? I hope that everything works out for you both - for Lucy's sake as well as your own."

"Do you think we should have told her about my depression too?" Lindsay asked of Danny a few minutes later, as they walked down the sidewalk towards the subway station.

"No why?"

"Well, if it affects Lucy…"

"Lindsay – it doesn't, not really," Danny assured her.

"She knows I've been unhappy," Lindsay reminded him.

"Maybe, but she has no real concept of why, does she? She's been worried about you – I'll give you that – but that's just because she's that kind of kid. I don't think it's affected her too badly. You got treatment before it got to the point where it caused her any real emotional damage."

"I guess," Lindsay agreed a little dubiously.

Hooking an arm around her shoulders, Danny tugged her in close to his side. "You worry too much, you know that right?" he said, pressing a light kiss into her hair.

"I'm a mother, it comes with the territory," she told him, looking up into his face with a stricken expression in her eyes. "I hate that my problems have affected her in any way at all," she said with feeling.

Danny sighed. "Lindsay, as much as we want to, I don't think it's possible to shield her from everything bad. Pain is part of life and all of us have to live through it at some point - even Lucy."

"Right, so when she wants to date an unsuitable boy who might break her heart in ten years time, you're just gonna stand back and let it happen? Because that's life and she needs to experience it?"

"Of course not. That's an entirely different scenario… and I think you mean twenty years not ten by the way."

Lindsay giggled. "I think you're hoping for a miracle there, babe," she told him. "I mean if she's anything like her Daddy…"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Danny said, affronted by the inference in that.

"Well, from what you've told me, you were an early bloomer…" she teased.

"Not _that_ early," Danny objected. "And besides, I was led astray by an older brother who thought it was way past time that I became a man."

Lindsay lifted her eyebrows. "I knew there had to be a logical reason for it," she said dryly.

"You're not funny, Montana. Not funny at all," he said, shooting daggers at her even though a hint of a smile was tugging at the corners of his lips.

Lindsay laughed as they went through the barriers at the subway station, and he grinned at her in return. "I think we should change the subject," he suggested as they headed down the stairs. "I don't want to think about Luce getting hit on just yet. It's in the future – way, way in the future."

"If you say so," Lindsay replied and then let the matter drop, digging in her purse for her cell as they waited on the platform for the train to arrive.

"Who you calling?" Danny asked.

"No-one," Lindsay answered. "I was expecting my Mom to call me. She knows I have my doctor's appointment this morning; I thought she'd check up on me to make sure I was going to turn up for it."

"Ahh," Danny said delicately.

Lindsay sighed in resignation. "She called you instead, right?"

He shrugged. "Guilty as charged."

"She's about as subtle as a sledgehammer sometimes," Lindsay commented acidly.

"She said she'd call you later. And don't be too hard on her – she's worried about you."

"I know that! It just irritates me when she treats me like a child – like calling the chaperone rather than going direct to the source, for instance."

"I'm not your chaperone, Lindsay – I'm your husband."

"In a manner of speaking."

"And what's that's supposed to mean?"

"Nothing, it's just all a little part-time at the moment, don't you think?"

"And whose fault is that?" Danny shot back before he could stop himself.

Lindsay looked at him with round, liquid eyes as the subway train drew into the station. "Mine," she said, and then hurried into the carriage ahead of him, her head bowed to hide her tears.

Danny swore under his breath and followed her. Grabbing the hand-hold above his head, he drew her close into his body with his free arm, steadying her as they were jostled by the crush of other passengers. "I'm sorry – that was harsh," he quietly apologised.

"It's the truth though, this is all my fault."

"On one level, maybe," Danny replied, not denying the fact. She'd asked him to be honest with her, to trust in her ability to weather the storm despite her illness, and he was trying to do that, however much it might worry him that it could end up making things worse. "But we're both equally guilty of allowing ourselves to grow so far apart that the incident at Sullivan's became such an issue for us," he added.

Lindsay sighed. "I didn't mean it the way it sounded," she said.

"Sure you did, and you were right. I'm not your husband in the way that I want to be right now, but I am committed to you, you've gotta know that."

"I do, I do, but I can't help being a little defensive sometimes. I'm afraid to allow myself to hope."

Danny sighed. "Me too."

"For real?" Lindsay asked, looking up at him in surprise.

"You think this is easy for me?" he said. "I'm as scared as you, Linds. I guess I just hide it better."

"I love you," Lindsay told him softly, tightening her arms around his waist and nuzzling her face into the hollow of his throat. "Don't think that I don't.

"I don't, and I love you too," Danny said, combing his fingers through her hair, "But that's not always enough, is it?"

"It's more than some people have," Lindsay said, tilting her head back to look up into his face.

He gazed down at her with a lop-sided smile. "Then I guess we've got reason to hope."

Lindsay smiled. "I guess we do," she said, and then stretched up on her tip-toes to press her lips to his.

Around forty-five minutes later, Danny was sitting alone in the clinic's waiting room, flicking absently through a Sports magazine but not really reading it. Lindsay had been in with the doctor for fifteen minutes now, and he was starting to get a little antsy. Exactly how long did it take to sort out a change in prescription? Finally, the intercom on the desk buzzed and - after briefly speaking to the person on the other end - the receptionist looked over expectantly at him.

"Mr Messer?" she said formally. "If you'd like to go through now? It's Room Three on the left."

"Thanks," Danny said, nodding to her as he rose to his feet.

Lindsay threw him a slightly hesitant smile as he knocked on the door and entered the room. He could see her eyes were a little red-rimmed and swollen, but he figured that was probably a good thing. It meant that she'd been honest with her doctor about how she'd been feeling.

"Hello? Danny isn't it?" Doctor Quinn rose from her desk to greet him. She was a statuesque woman in her mid-forties with rich chestnut hair which was cut in a sleek, mid-length bob to frame her angular face.

"Last time I checked," he said.

"Well, take a seat," she said, indicating the empty chair besides Lindsay with a wave of her hand.

Obediently sitting down, Danny reached over and took Lindsay's hand in his. "Everything okay?" he asked her, his eyes intent on hers.

She nodded. "Yeah, I… It's…" She broke his gaze and looked at her doctor for assistance.

"We've adjusted Lindsay's medication, but not so much that she's uncomfortable with it," the other woman explained.

"It'll take the edge of my anxiety," Lindsay continued, "But it won't zombie-fy me like I was worried it would. I want to be able to feel. I need to be able to feel if we're going to sort things out between us."

Danny nodded. "So, it's all good?" he asked.

"Yeah, it's all good," Lindsay agreed with a faint smile.

"Lindsay said you had some questions for me?" Doctor Quinn enquired then.

"Yeah I…" Danny stopped to clear his throat. "I didn't know about any of this before," he explained. "About the depression, I mean. I knew she'd been through a tough time as a teenager and I'm not so naïve that I didn't realise that had to have had an effect on her…"

"But you didn't realise just how much of an effect?" Doctor Quinn surmised.

"Exactly. We've talked a lot over the last couple of weeks so I have a much better understanding now than I did before, but it's still all a bit of an unknown to me. We have a friend who's a doctor and he's given me some info to read, but it's not specific to Lindsay, you know?"

Doctor Quinn nodded. "Lindsay's depression is fairly mild," she told him. "And it's not a full-time thing either. It's just something that she's vulnerable to at times of stress. Right now, she's suffering, but there is no need to treat her differently. Just be aware that her reactions to emotional events may be a little exaggerated and temper your own responses to take account of that. She might work herself into a state every so often, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't return to whatever issue you need to resolve when she's calm again. She needs to work through what's bothering her in order for her to get better."

"And when she does? Get better, I mean?"

"Then you should keep an eye out for any signs of the depression returning, and get her help as soon as those symptoms start to manifest themselves. An isolated emotional outburst or a temporary downer isn't anything to worry about however. That's normal human behaviour. You're looking for a sustained level of emotional instability. Be vigilant, but don't let it take over your lives."

Danny nodded. "And is there anything I can do to help her now?" he asked.

Doctor Quinn smiled. "Just keep on doing what you have been doing," she said. "Lindsay says you're being supportive, but there is no magical cure, I'm afraid. It takes time and commitment."

"And don't forget about yourself in all of this," she went on. "This is tough on you too, and that's something that needs to be acknowledged. There are support groups that you could join if you're interested…"

Danny grimaced. "I've nothing against that kind of thing, but I'm not sure it's really me," he said uncomfortably.

"It isn't for everybody, I agree," Doctor Quinn said, rising from her seat.

Turning to the floor-to-ceiling shelves that lined the back wall, she withdrew a folder, flicked through it and removed a leaflet from within. Sitting back down, she took a pen and circled one of the numbers, and then pushed the leaflet across the desk to Danny.

"Give them a call," she suggested. "It's not a support group in the traditional sense – just a bunch of guys whose lives are affected by someone with depression. They meet up for a social event around once a month - go bowling or to a bar to shoot some pool, that kind of thing. And if they happen to share advice and off-load some of their troubles in the process then that's just a bonus."

"Sounds more your thing," Lindsay remarked encouragingly.

Danny nodded, tucking the leaflet into his jacket pocket. "I'll check it out," he said.

Doctor Quinn nodded in satisfaction. "Good," she said. "Trust me, having someone to talk to helps. And the best advice is always going to come from someone who has been through it. They can understand in ways that nobody else can hope to."

"And what about Lindsay?" Danny asked.

"She's been through a lot of therapy already, but I've suggested she consider a short course of counselling to help her with her current issues. And there's couple's counselling too, of course, but that's something you need to discuss and agree between yourselves."

"Okay," Danny said, then drew in and released a long, slow breath.

"Has that set your mind at rest?" Doctor Quinn asked.

"I don't feel quite so much like I'm stumbling around in the dark," Danny confessed, "So thank-you for that."

"You're welcome," Lindsay's doctor replied before turning back to her patient. "Now you've got your prescription and I'll see you in a few weeks time, all right? Just make an appointment with Angela at the desk."

Lindsay nodded and then bent to gather her purse, while Danny pushed back his chair and got to his feet.

"And think about the counselling," Doctor Quinn added as the two of them headed for the door.

"I will," Lindsay assured her.

After scheduling her follow-up appointment, Lindsay paused to button up her coat and pull on her gloves before she and Danny left the clinic. "So, I guess we should head into work?" she said as they descended the short flight of steps to the sidewalk below.

Danny shook his head. "No – let's go grab a cup of coffee first," he suggested. "We need to talk."

"About what?"

He looked at her steadily. "You don't want to go for the counselling."

Lindsay huffed out her breath in exasperation. "It's not that I don't want to go. I just don't see the point. I've had enough therapy to last me a lifetime, and I'd have to fit it in around work, Lucy, us."

"But it'd be what? An hour a week at most?"

"Yes, for six weeks, but that's beside the point."

"It is? How's that?" Danny enquired.

Lindsay stared at him in consternation. "Are you going to call that number?" she challenged him.

"Yes actually, I am," he told her, "And stop changing the subject."

"And what about the couple's counselling?" Lindsay continued, deliberately ignoring his censure.

"I think we should at least consider it," Danny replied.

Lindsay's eyes widened at that. She thought it'd be the last thing he'd want. "But we're doing okay on our own, aren't we?" she asked.

"So far," he agreed. "But there's a long way to go yet, and we can't just drift along and hope for the best. We've gotta come up with some kind of action plan."

"And you think that couple's counselling should be part of that?"

He shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not, I don't know. That's what we've got to figure out."

"And we're going to do all that over coffee at Starbucks?"

"No, but we could make a start. Plus, we need to talk about that counselling for you."

"Danny…" Lindsay protested helplessly.

"I'm like a dog with a bone, remember?" he cut in, quoting her comment from earlier that morning. Turning towards her, he reached out to take her shoulders in his hands. "Look, I want you to get well, okay? And when I want something…" He shot her a pointed look, leaving her to fill in the blanks.

Backed into a corner, Lindsay relented. "All right," she said reluctantly. "I'll think about it."

"Good." Danny leaned forward and kissed her forehead, and then took her gloved hand in his. "Come on, let's go get that caffeine fix."

Fifteen minutes later, they were settled side-by-side on a couch in the back corner of the coffee shop. A couple of mocha lattés stood on the low table in front of them, along with a huge choc-chip muffin that Danny had insisted on purchasing, despite Lindsay's protestations that she wasn't hungry.

"I know you. You probably ate like a bird this morning," he said as he sliced the cake in half and passed her a portion.

She'd had half a bagel with a smear of low-fat cream cheese and hadn't eaten all of it so he wasn't too far wrong. "Food sticks in my throat when I get nervous," she told him.

"And your appetite is an issue for you when you're depressed," he finished for her.

"My Mom told you that." It wasn't a question.

"Yeah, but I'd figured it out for myself anyway. You desperately need a little more meat on your bones, babe. The emaciated look does not become you."

"So your solution to that is to stuff me full of fatty, junk food at every available opportunity?"

"No, but a little calorific treat is not going to hurt you any. Tell you what, you eat that for me now, and I'll buy you something healthier for lunch."

"Hmm, bribery. How could I resist?" Lindsay mused.

"You can't. I'm a force of nature," Danny quipped.

Lindsay grinned. "Well, that's the understatement of the year," she said with a laugh.

"I think I'll ignore the implication in that," Danny returned with a chuckle.

"So," Lindsay paused to take a bite of her muffin before she got down to the heart of the matter. "You want us to come up with some sort of reconciliation contract, is that it?"

"Nothing quite so rigid," Danny replied, "We've been dealing with this in a reasonably healthy fashion so far, and I want that to continue. It's different now we're back from Montana though. There, all we had to think about was us, and your parents were on hand to take Lucy whenever we needed some space. Here, it's not quite that simple. We're in danger of drifting along in a kind of half-state and never really moving forward if we don't do something about it."

"But how do we know, Danny? How do we know when we're ready to move on from this to something a little more permanent?"

Danny shrugged. "I honestly don't know. When it feels right, I guess."

"And it doesn't feel right now?" Lindsay persisted.

"Does it to you?" Danny asked her.

"I want you in my life more than you currently are," she told him truthfully. "I know we're a way from being all right, but I don't doubt how I feel about you. I get the impression you do though."

Danny sighed. "Look – cards on the table, okay? I'd moved on. This is like rewinding time and it doesn't sit all that comfortably with me. I've always been a 'don't look back, move forward' kind of guy. I want this, I do, but I guess I'm more cautious than I might ordinarily be."

"So you need more time before you're sure?"

"Yes."

The response was emphatic, and Lindsay felt her spirits flag as a result. "Well," she said lightly, trying to disguise the hurt but not really succeeding. "I owe you that at least, don't I?"

"I'm sorry. It's just the way I feel. I don't mean to hurt you," Danny said.

"I know," Lindsay said, recovering herself enough to brush that aside. "So – where do we go from here?" she asked.

"We need to make time to talk," Danny replied. "And take the time to chill in each other's company too. We said we'd date right?"

Lindsay nodded in agreement. "We did."

"I think we should approach that as we have been doing - taking the opportunity to spend time together as and when the possibility arises. As for time to talk, I think we should be a bit more regimented about that, don't you? Set aside a regular time slot for it maybe?"

"If we talked to Mac, we could probably rearrange our shifts so that we could get a few hours off together every week," Lindsay suggested. "It would be easier for us during the day because we wouldn't have to arrange additional child-care for Lucy."

Danny nodded. "Sounds good. We'll talk to him today, yeah?"

"Yeah," Lindsay agreed. "And what about the couple's counselling?" she asked.

"I think we're managing fine on our own at the moment, but we should keep it in mind if we hit a road-block that we don't know how to resolve. We made the mistake of ignoring issues we found too difficult before. We can't do that this time around."

Lindsay couldn't help but smile at that. "Is this really us?" she asked rhetorically.

Danny grinned at her. "What confronting issues instead of sweeping them under the carpet?"

"And being all mature and sensible about it too," she pointed out.

Danny chuckled. "It's something of an alien concept, I admit, but a necessary one, I think. We've got to take this thing step by step if we're going to make it work."

"So we're agreed on the next step now, right?" Lindsay enquired.

"I think we are," Danny concurred.

"So - should we shake on it then?"

A slow smile spread across Danny's face. "Oh, I think we can do better than that, babe," he said, sliding his arm across the back of the sofa behind her head and shifting closer.

"Oh yeah?" Lindsay said a touch breathlessly, mesmerised into immobility by the determined look in his blue eyes and the flutter of his warm breath across her face.

"Undoubtedly," he answered, just before his lips met hers and proved that point beyond a shadow of a doubt…

_**To be continued…**_


	22. The Gatecrasher

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hey! Sorry for the lengthy wait for an update. I had most of this done last weekend, but I couldn't find the time to complete the last scene until today. Hope it's worth the wait!

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 22 – The Gatecrasher**_

_**Early Friday evening, two weeks later…**_

"You know I'm available to baby-sit if you want to go out tonight," Stella said to Lindsay as they packed away the last of the scattered toys.

Lucy had had a play-date that afternoon and – much to her mother's acute embarrassment - the apartment had looked like a toy-shop had exploded in the centre of it when Stella had arrived home from work an hour or so earlier. Although her colleague had been nothing but welcoming to her and her young daughter, Lindsay knew it must be a major adjustment for Stella to have them living with her. The older woman was used to calm and serenity in her home, but now that haven of peace had been shattered by a four year old ball of perpetual energy.

Said energy ball was currently ensconced on the sofa watching 'The Little Mermaid' for perhaps the hundredth time over. It amazed Lindsay how small children could watch the same TV programme repeatedly and never get bored with it. Lucy was as delighted by the feature length cartoon now as she had been the very first time she'd seen it. After the excitement of having her friends over, the movie thankfully served as a very effective mood-leveller. Mesmerised by the age-old magic of Disney, the little girl sat quiet and undemanding, completely oblivious to the activity around her.

"Thanks for the offer, Stell', but I was just going to have a quiet night in," Lindsay told her friend.

"But isn't it the 'young persons' monthly night out tonight?" Stella enquired. "Why don't you go along to that? Danny will be there won't he?"

Lindsay shrugged. "I don't know; we didn't make any plans to see each other tonight. And what do you mean the 'young persons' night out?" she said with a smile. "You make it sound like you've got one foot in the grave!"

Stella laughed. "Well, me and Mac do have a few years on the rest of you," she pointed out. "I suppose we mainly give it a miss because we don't like to make things uncomfortable for anyone. It kinda kills the mood when you have the boss along for the ride, doesn't it?"

"Well, that depends on the boss," Lindsay said. "As superiors go, you and Mac are two of the best."

Stella smiled. "Sweet of you to say, but I'm not sure everyone would agree with you. It's fine for you and the other CSIs because you work with us on a relatively equal footing, but I think some of the younger Lab Techs would be much more daunted by the prospect of us being there, don't you?"

"I guess," Lindsay agreed with an incline of her head.

"That doesn't stop you from attending though," Stella went on persuasively.

"I don't know," Lindsay said, dragging her heels. "I've been persona non grata at those events for quite a while now. I know it's not personal. It's just been too awkward with things the way they were between me and Danny. At work, we managed to find a professional balance. Out of it?" She shook her head sadly. "Not so much."

"But that's no longer an issue, is it?" Stella pointed out. "And this is more about you than Danny anyway. You've isolated yourself, Lindsay, locked yourself away in some sort of social prison ever since your marriage broke down. You need to get out and socialise more. It's time to break down a few of those walls that you've built up around yourself and set yourself free."

Lindsay pursed her lips thoughtfully. "I suppose I wouldn't have to leave until after Lucy was in bed," she mused.

"And you'd be here when she woke up in the morning," Stella continued encouragingly. "It's rare that she wakes up in the night nowadays, isn't it? And it's not like you have to be out until 3 AM anyway. You can come home at a reasonably decent hour. Lucy'll be none the wiser about your absence, believe me."

"I guess…" Lindsay concurred a little dubiously.

"Look – why don't you go and take a shower while she watches the rest of that DVD?" Stella suggested. "If you get ready to go out now, you'll be able to bathe and put her to bed yourself."

Lindsay smiled. "Why do I get the impression that if I don't agree, you'll kick me out the door anyway?" she said.

Stella grinned. "I'm not sure I'd go that far," she replied. "But I'll definitely be on your case about it for the rest of the night, so I'd avoid the torture if I were you."

"All right, all right, I'll go," Lindsay said, holding up her hands in mock surrender. "I guess it _might_ be kind of fun," she decided.

"Of course it will."

"I should text Danny."

"Why?" Stella asked. "It's open invitation, isn't it? You show up at Sullivan's between six and eight and you get a ticket to ride, right?"

"Well yeah…"

"So why do you need Danny's permission then? I'm not saying he would try to dissuade you or anything, but this is about re-discovering your independence, Lindsay. If all you do is widen your sphere to include Danny then you're still restricting yourself, aren't you? The two of you don't have to be joined at the hip, you know. You can exist as separate individuals as well as part of a couple."

Lindsay nodded. "You're right," she said determinedly. "I would normally let him know where I was because that's just what couples do, but it _would_ be fun to make an unexpected entrance..."

Stella grinned. "Now, there's that fighting spirit," she said. "I knew it still existed inside of you somewhere."

Lindsay couldn't help but smile back. "I guess I misplaced it for a little while," she said softly, "But I think I've found it again now."

"I'm glad," Stella said, drawing her into a warm hug.

Overwhelmed, Lindsay returned the embrace, humbled by the unconditional support from her colleague. One good thing that had come out of the emotional mess that she'd found herself in was her friendship with Stella. They'd always been friends, of course, but that friendship had deepened over the past few weeks.

Lindsay had been a little uncertain about her and Lucy staying here at first, but she had no regrets now. She needed that daily support from someone who didn't judge her, but also didn't allow things to pass by unsaid. When she needed a gentle shove in the right direction, Stella would give it without question. She'd pushed Lindsay to break free of the chains of her depression and for that, she would be infinitely grateful.

Her life may still be something of an emotional rollercoaster ride, but – thanks to Stella's support and her own newfound determination - she had a tighter grip on the reins now, and the effects of her depression were slowly beginning to ease as a result. It would be a while yet before she was back to normal and could come off the medication, but she was getting there and that was the main thing.

Now, if she could just find a way to put the scattered pieces of her marriage back together, she'd be whole again…

**OOOOOO**

_**Sullivans, 7.00**__** PM…**_

"I didn't know Rachel would be here," Danny said to Flack as they headed to the bar to get a round of drinks for themselves and several others.

"Were you expecting her to bail just because the two of you split up?" Don replied. "You should know her better than that, Danny. And besides, she and Ellen are still friends," he added, referring to his own girlfriend, "And I don't think that's going to change anytime soon."

"I know, I know, and it's not like I'm saying she shouldn't be here," Danny said. "I just wasn't expecting it that's all. It makes being here myself seem kind of underhanded if you want to know the truth."

"Why's that?"

"Because Lindsay doesn't know about it," Danny explained. "It's all been a bit heavy-going between us lately, and I kind of needed a night off to recharge my batteries. I didn't think coming along tonight would be such a big deal until I got here."

"You're not regretting your decision to get back together with her, are you?" Flack asked him, a faint frown line appearing between his brows at the prospect.

Danny shook his head. "No, no, of course not. I suppose I'd just gotten used to my life the way it was. I had Lucy a couple of times a week and every other weekend, I saw Rachel fairly often, but the rest of my free time was my own. It's different when you're married or living with someone though. You're kind of beholden to them in a way – not in a _bad_ way, but you do have to consider them in everything that you do."

"I remember you coming out alone when you and Lindsay were still together though, Dan," Flack pointed out. "She never had you on that strict a leash. What's so different now?"

"Nothing exactly – Lindsay's always been fairly easy-going in that respect. She accepts that we need our own space every once in a while. We usually discussed and agreed it first though – even if it was just a casual 'I'm going to shoot some hoops with the boys. Is that okay, babe?' sort of thing. Unfortunately, when things started to fall apart, I stopped letting her know where I was all the time, and it ended up being a huge issue for us."

"Well, if it bothers you that much, call her," Flack advised as they elbowed their way through the crush at the bar.

Danny snorted derisively. "And say what?" he said. "Hey babe! I'm just out for the night with my ex – that's ok with you, right?" He shook his head. "Yeah, like that's not going to go down like a lead balloon."

"It's a question of trust, I suppose," Don said. "If Lindsay can't learn to trust you then - as much as I hate to say it, buddy - maybe getting back together is the wrong decision for you both."

"I'm sure we can manage to work through our trust issues in time," Danny told his friend, "But it's a little too soon to be testing the waters right now."

"So what? You gonna go home?" Flack said in exasperation. "Just because Rachel's here? It's not as if you're out alone with her, Danny. There are enough of us here that you wouldn't have to speak to her all night if you didn't want to."

"That's kind of beside the point, don't you think?"

"I think I'm rather losing the point if you want to know the truth," Don replied in a weary tone. "It's your issue, Danny; it's up to you to decide how you want to handle it."

"Well, so much for offering friendly advice," Danny remarked acidly.

Flack sighed. "Listen - I'm glad that you and Linds are giving things another go, but I do think you're making all of this harder than it needs to be. You've agreed to let bygones be bygones, right? You still love each other – that's obvious to everyone who knows you - so what exactly are you waiting for, huh?"

Danny looked at his friend, realising that he was never going to truly understand until he'd experienced the kind of love that came with a lifetime commitment. Not that Don was Mr One Night Stand or anything, but he'd never really committed to a relationship for the long haul. A bit like himself before Lindsay actually. Until he'd met the woman who was to become his wife, his relationships with women had simply been about female companionship and having fun. The future was exactly that – the future, and not that much of a consideration. He'd lived his life very much in the present with rarely a thought spared for tomorrow.

Marriage was something that took hard work and commitment however. It was inevitable that there'd be bumps in the road along the way. Little irritations could be blown out of proportion when you were living in such close proximity. What ultimately made a relationship a success was the ability to manage those challenges and move on from them, and if Danny was brutally honest with himself, he knew that he and Lindsay had not quite reached that point yet. Yes, they loved each other, but unfortunately unquestioned trust wasn't so forthcoming. They were working on it, but there was a way to go yet before he could comfortably say they were on the right track.

It was a dilemma and a half that was for sure. On the one hand, Flack was right – it shouldn't be such an issue for them. On the other, given their past history, he owed Lindsay's fragile self-esteem more consideration than he was currently affording it. Yes, the situation might be perfectly innocent, but keeping her in the dark wasn't the way to go about regaining her trust.

His decision made, he removed his wallet and cell from his inside jacket pocket, passed Flack some money for his share of the bar bill, and then jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the restrooms. "I'll be back in a minute," he said. "I'm just going to make a call."

**OOOOOO**

_**Stella's apartment**__**, a minute or so later…**_

The purse sat on the dresser. The cell phone within it rang, but unfortunately went unheard in the deserted bedroom. Across the hall, the phone's owner sat on the floor beside the bed, reading her four-year old daughter a bedtime story.

"You look pretty tonight, Mommy," Lucy said as her mother paused in her narration to turn the page.

Lindsay smiled affectionately at her little girl. "I do?"

Her daughter nodded. "Like a princess," she declared, reaching out to touch the bouncy curls that artfully framed her mother's delicate features.

Rather than straighten her hair as she usually did, Lindsay had teased it into messy waves and left it hanging loose about her face. The dress code tonight was smart-casual, but she had been inspired to make an extra effort with her appearance. Stella was right, she had locked herself away for far too long. If she was going to stage a jailbreak she ought to do it in style. Her make-up, while not over the top, was significantly more dramatic than her usual au natural look therefore – her eyes shadowed in smoky greys and purples and her lips coated in a rose-tinted shimmer.

Her outfit – the navy-blue, figure-hugging jeans she'd treated herself to last week and a deep rose-coloured satin top - was laid out on her bed ready for her to change into after she'd tucked Lucy in for the night. One did not bathe a four-year old and expect to come away with clothing in a wearable state, not unless one was extremely lucky anyway. As a testament to that undeniable fact, the casual sweatpants and t-shirt Lindsay currently wore were spotted with damp patches and smudges of talcum powder – yummy-mommy she definitely was not right now.

"Thank-you, sweetheart." Lindsay said, leaning over to kiss her little girl's forehead. Smoothing Lucy's blonde curls away from her face, she smiled as the child's eye-lids fluttered drowsily.

"I think it's sleep time for you," she declared softly as she set the half-finished book aside. "Mommy'll see you in the morning, yeah?"

"Okay," Lucy said, reaching up her arms for a hug and a kiss. "I love you, Mommy."

"I love you too, sweetie," Lindsay replied, tucking the comforter more firmly around her. "Night, night, baby."

"Night, night, Mommy," Lucy returned as she snuggled down under covers and closed her eyes.

Lindsay smiled, knowing that her daughter would be asleep within a matter of minutes. Leaving just the night-light burning, she went back into her bedroom and got changed into her jeans and top before slipping her feet into a pair of three-inch heels.

"Not bad if I do say so myself," she murmured, surveying her reflection in the full-length mirror. She may not be model-beautiful, but she pulled off the sexy girl next-door look with honours.

Grabbing her purse off the dresser and her best coat from the closet, she headed into the lounge where Stella was curled up in her favourite armchair, reading a book. "Looking good, kiddo," the older woman remarked with a smile.

Lindsay grinned. "Thanks," she said as she shrugged her arms into her coat and buttoned it up. "You sure you're okay with this?"

"I'm sure," Stella said, waving her hand in the direction of the door. "Go and have fun already."

"Okay, well, I've got my cell if you need anything," Lindsay said, procrastinating a little.

"It'll be fine," Stella assured her. "Now get going or you're not going to make it for eight."

Responding to her friend's metaphorical kick up the butt, Lindsay headed for the door. Outside on the street, she flagged down a cab and gave the driver her destination before settling back against the battered leather seat for the journey.

Watching the city lights go by, she was struck with a peculiar sense of déjà vu. Sixteen months earlier, she'd been heading towards Sullivan's with a similar surprise entrance in mind. It seemed so long ago now, and yet the shockwaves from that night were still making their presence felt in her life today.

Try as she might, she still didn't have total faith that Danny would stick around for the long-term. His recent reticence was unintentionally inciting her insecurities even though she repeatedly reminded herself that she was being unfair. He had his own pain over their marriage break-up to deal with, and they were only just starting to break the surface of that. It had all been about her issues thus far, but at some point they would have to tackle Danny's too. If they didn't, they were never going to move on, and all the work that they'd put into finding a place of common ground would be for nought.

Lindsay sighed, trying to shut her mind off from the unwelcome thoughts that were invading it. For one night, she just wanted to relax, have fun and not worry about the demands of tomorrow. It was tough-going for both her and Danny right now. As they'd agreed after her doctor's appointment a couple of weeks ago, they'd arranged their work schedules so that they could have an afternoon off a week to talk over their problems and work towards resolving them. That had only happened twice so far, but things were going as well as could be expected given the issues that they had to address.

The only problem with this was that it inevitably spilled over into other areas of their lives. They'd not yet managed to get the balance right if truth be told. It was hard to set things aside and relax in each other's company when so much still remained unresolved between them, and their date nights often felt somewhat contrived as a result. They each tried way too hard to keep the atmosphere light and cheery, and then predictably fell back into discussing their relationship when the strain of that became too much.

Of course that just ended up dragging them both down. It was sad. Their relationship used to be so easy, now it felt like a long, uphill slog through deep snow – exhilarating at times, but a painful struggle for the most part. Lindsay knew that they had to find a way to redress the balance soon, or they'd reach the point where they stopped believing that the end result was worth the effort. Yes, resolving their problems was important, but there had to be some respite from that or they were just going to end up emotionally exhausted by it all.

Closing her eyes, she drew in a few calming breaths to settle her overwrought emotions. 'Stop thinking so much' she silently admonished herself. 'Just relax and let it go. For one night, just relax and let it go.'

Ten minutes later, she pushed open the door to Sullivan's. The wall of heat that greeted her was a startling contrast to the chill from outside. Standing just inside the doorway, she deftly unbuttoned her coat and searched the crowded bar for her work colleagues. She spotted Hawkes first, leaning casually against a pillar near the back of the bar, a bottle of beer in hand. Her eyes then swept the rest of the gathered throng until her gaze landed on Danny. Her stomach lurched painfully as she watched him throw back his head and laugh heartily at something that Flack's girlfriend, Ellen said.

He looked so happy and carefree. Gone were the lines of strain that always seemed to mar his features whenever he was with her. What was worse was that Don and Ellen weren't his only company - Rachel sat across the table from him along with another couple of cops from the precinct. They all looked to be having such a good time and she knew her presence was only going to introduce an unavoidable awkwardness to the proceedings…

She was back out on the sidewalk before she was even aware of what she was doing. She shouldn't have come, it was a mistake. It was all a mistake. Why had she thought that they could make this work? Why had she believed that they could find their way back to where they used to be? They were not the same people anymore. They'd grown so far apart over this past year - that's why reconnecting was proving such a struggle for them. Her dream of happy-ever-after was like a candle in the wind, one sudden, unexpected gust and the flame would go out permanently.

Shivering, she drew her coat closer about her as hot tears filled her eyes and acid burned in her stomach. She wasn't angry; she was simply sad – sad and defeated. Her heart heavy in her chest, she stepped to the edge of the sidewalk, lifting her hand to hail a cab, but stopped when something deep inside of her shifted.

What was she doing? Why was she giving up when she hadn't even tried? This was exactly what she'd vowed not to do. She would no longer allow her fear of rejection control how she reacted to difficult situations. Her reactions always had logic behind them; she'd always reasoned things out in her mind. It was just that that reasoning was so often flawed.

When had Danny ever given her any indication that this was not what he wanted, for instance? Knowing he was finding it as difficult as her, she could understand his need for a night off. She just wished he'd told her where he'd be and who he'd be with, but the fact that he hadn't wasn't cause for her to run away like this. She had as much of a right to be here as anyone else. He owed her an explanation, but equally she owed him the chance to explain. She hadn't given him that chance sixteen months ago, and look where that had gotten her - lonely and depressed, and having to watch the man she loved with someone else. She didn't want to go back there, which meant she had to screw up her courage and face what had to be faced.

Letting her raised arm drop back down to her side, she turned back for the bar. Her cell phone rang and she extracted it from her purse without looking at who was calling. "Hello?" she spoke absently into the receiver.

"Lindsay? Is that you?" Danny's voice sounded in her ear. She could hear muffled conversation and music in the background.

"Yes," she replied, her hand tightening around the phone.

"Sorry – the decibel level in here is kind of high, and you sounded like you weren't expecting it to be me. Didn't you get the message I left earlier?"

"No I… I haven't looked at my phone."

"Oh. Well I umm… I decided to come out with the guys tonight," he explained. "I just…" He stopped and made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat. "Jesus, this is awkward!" he remarked. "Look – I didn't want it to get back to you and for you to get the wrong idea."

"You're allowed to go out without my permission, Danny," Lindsay said, her heart a little lighter. He'd called her, and when she hadn't returned his call, he'd called again.

"Yeah, I know. It's just that well… Rachel's here," he told her in a rush. "I wasn't really expecting her to be, but I should have known I guess. There's nothing in it, but if it makes you uncomfortable…"

"I'm outside," Lindsay interrupted.

"Huh?" Danny sounded confused. "Outside where?"

"Sullivan's," she said. "Stella persuaded me to come along tonight. She thought I needed to get out. I umm… I was just coming back inside," she confessed.

There was a short pause. "Meaning you've already been in and drawn your own conclusions," Danny surmised wearily.

"Yes," she replied, full of guilt now. "I'm sorry, I just…" She heaved out a shaky breath. "I was coming back in," she insisted.

Danny sighed. "Don't move," he instructed.

"W-what?"

"Just don't go anywhere," he said and then abruptly cut off their call.

Hugging her arms about her middle, Lindsay rocked back and forth on her heels as she waited, and then started guiltily when the bar doors opened and Danny stepped out onto the sidewalk, zipping up his leather bomber jacket against the cold.

"I'm sorry," she said again as he approached.

Drawing to a standstill in front of her, he studied her face carefully before his lips curled up into a small smile. "It may not be where we want it to be," he said, "But at least it's progress."

"It is?" Lindsay asked. This wasn't the response she'd been expecting.

"Yeah," he replied. "I wasn't comfortable being here without you knowing about it…"

"So you called to let me know where you were," Lindsay put in.

Danny nodded. "And you may have reacted in the wrong way at first, but you were coming back inside – I assume to talk to me and give me a chance to explain?"

"Yes."

"Well, it's one up on a year and a half ago then, isn't it?" he remarked.

Lindsay sighed. "I guess, but it's not enough, is it?"

Danny reached out and lightly cupped her face in his palm. "So we keep working at it," he said, his thumb brushing over the swell of her cheek.

"I wasn't expecting it to be this hard," Lindsay admitted candidly. "I mean I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I didn't expect it to weigh down on us so much. I want to be with you, but there are times when I just need a break from it all. It's not supposed to be like that, is it?"

Breaking the physical contact, Danny raked his fingers through his hair. "Maybe we're just trying too hard," he said. "We're so focused on making things right that it's become the only thing we can think about when we're together. We need to take a step back and go with the flow a little more, or we gonna burn out. I guess we're being honest with each other on one level, but then tip-toeing around each other on another."

"How do you mean?" Lindsay asked.

"Well, we're openly talking about our problems now - which is good - but we're not allowing ourselves to reconnect on a more personal level, are we? It's like neither of us is prepared to let that barrier come down until we have more of a guarantee that we can make this work."

"So how do we get past that?"

"Honestly?" Danny shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. I think acknowledging that barrier exists is a start. Knocking it down is more of a mountain to climb and is probably something we should discuss another time. Right now, I think we should go back inside and try to enjoy ourselves. We both need a night off, and it'll be easier to relax with everyone else around."

"We shouldn't need other people as a buffer, Danny," Lindsay pointed out.

He nodded. "Yeah I know, and I don't think we do, not really. But there's no harm in using the situation to our advantage, is there?"

"I guess not," Lindsay agreed, "But I'm not sure why you think this is going to be a relaxing evening. With Rachel here, my presence is only going to make things awkward for everyone. I should probably just go."

"No." Danny shook his head resolutely. "We're not going to have a repeat of what happened when you and I split, okay? I never realised how isolated you became and I should have done. The same thing is not going to happen again – to you or to Rachel. I'm not saying the three of us are going to end up bosom buddies or anything, but we should at least be able to find some middle ground so that we can hang out as part of a group. We're all adults here after all."

"Don't you think that's asking rather a lot?" Lindsay said. "I know how I felt watching you and her together. The situation's pretty much the same now, just in reverse."

Danny sighed. "Maybe I'm living in a fantasy world, but I still think it's worth a shot. Rachel and I didn't part on bad terms, and she knew I wasn't ready for anything too serious when we got together. She may not like the choice I've made, but she accepts and understands it. I think she always knew I'd never really gotten over you."

"That doesn't stop you falling in love with someone though, Danny," Lindsay pointed out. "And let's be honest here, from her point of view, I did kind of steal you away from her, didn't I?"

"Look – if it really is a problem then we'll leave okay? But we're not gonna know how she'll react unless we go back inside, are we?"

Lindsay sighed. "How did everything get so complicated?"

Danny gnawed uncomfortably at his bottom lip. "You don't want me to answer that," he told her darkly.

Something inside Lindsay snapped. "You know what Danny? I do okay? I do want you to answer that."

"Lindsay – not now all right? This isn't the time or the place."

The familiar refrain only irritated her more. "You're avoiding," she accused. "I thought we weren't going to do that any more."

"Selectively avoiding," he told her. "With good reason by the way – something I've already explained to you if you recall."

"We've got to get it out in the open some time, Danny."

He sighed. "I know."

"All right – so when then?" she demanded

"It's not something that's got a set time limit, Lindsay!" Danny retorted.

"Yes, it is," she insisted, "Because you know what? I think this is the biggest obstacle we have to overcome right now. You said neither of us is prepared to let that barrier come down until we have more of a guarantee that we can make this work, but that's not really true, is it? It's you that's keeping it there not me. Sometimes I think you don't really want this. You're making all the right noises, doing all the right things, but whenever we get too close to what you don't want to admit to, you back off. You're using my state of mind as an excuse for what _you_ don't want to face."

There was deathly silence at that.

"Tell me I'm wrong, Danny," Lindsay said when he refused to look her in the eye.

"You don't understand," he hissed, his voice tight and controlled even though the emotions underneath were anything but.

"No I don't, so explain it to me."

He looked at her; his blue eyes blank and ice-cool. "I'm not going to do this here," he vowed stubbornly.

"Danny!"

He grasped hold of her chin, his touch a little rough but not bruising. The expression in his eyes was no longer blank - it was a storm of conflicting emotions. "You wanna know?" he demanded. "Then you'll know, but I'm not going to do this on a public street with every man and his dog around to witness my humiliation. It can damn well wait. I came here for a night off from all of this crap, and that's what I'm going to do! I'm going back inside. It's up to you whether you want to do the same."

He released his hold on her, span on his heel and stalked back towards the bar, leaving her standing, alone and shocked, on the sidewalk. Her heart was hammering a drum-beat inside her chest. She'd pushed and she'd got it in spades. She knew he was angry, hurt, but she'd never understood the level of it. And what had he meant by 'my humiliation'? Is that how he felt? That she'd humiliated him somehow? Maybe she had, but she hadn't meant to. She really hadn't.

One part of her wanted to back away, but somehow she managed to find the strength to continue. She could leave, go home to lick her wounds, or she could go in there and keep the pressure up. Danny would play the game and avoid any sort of confrontation with everyone else around, she knew, but if she backed off, he would regain control and find a way to avoid what he didn't want to face.

But they had to face it. Lindsay's conviction over that grew stronger by the minute. It might be something of a car-crash, it could shatter their fragile bond for good, but if they didn't get past it then they had no-where to go and she couldn't live her life in limbo. She'd always loved him, but for a long time she'd held herself back from him, just as he was doing to her now. That only led to pain and misery for all concerned in the end. True and honest love was often brutal and painful, but it could also be the source of ultimate joy. You just had to be brave enough to embrace it for everything that it was. Only then could you reap its every reward.

Squaring her shoulders, she drew in a deep breath through her nose and let it out slowly through her mouth, then gathered that fighting spirit that she thought she'd lost and headed into battle. If she had to fight for her marriage then by god she would. She might lose, but at least she'd have given it her all. That was all she could do, that was all anyone could do. You had to choose your battles, make your stand and hope that you came out the other end of it on the winning side…

_**To be continued…**_

_**A/N2: **__I know a cliff-hanger and when I'm super slow in updating too! I'm hoping to make the next part an early Christmas present, but no guarantees. If real life doesn't ease up a little, it might be a belated present! Anyway, bye for now. _

_CharmedBec x_


	23. A Reversal of Fortunes

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Happy New Year to you all. So sorry this wasn't an early Christmas present, but let's just say real – or rather work - life sucks at the moment. Lots of overtime means hardly any time to write :-( It _should_ ease up over the next few weeks so maybe then we will be back on track.

Now, without any further ado, let's catch up with our favourite hero and heroine…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 23 – A Reversal of Fortunes**_

Danny was nowhere to be seen when Lindsay re-entered the bar. Hesitating for a moment, she stood just inside the doorway, unsure of what to do. Her colleagues would think it strange her turning up like this - unannounced and with her errant husband apparently AWOL. There'd be speculative looks, raised eyebrows, and probably one or two silent 'what the hell is she doing here?'s too.

She forced herself not to care. She had as much right to be here as anyone else. They were just going to have to live with it. She would no longer be a dormouse hiding herself away in her little cubby hole. She needed friends, adult interaction, because as much as she loved her daughter, the conversation between them wasn't exactly scintillating. Plus, once Lucy was tucked up in bed at night, she had way too much time alone with her thoughts than was strictly healthy for a woman battling depression.

Blowing out her breath from between her lips to steady her nerves, she weaved her way through the crowd to where her colleagues were gathered near the back of the bar. Hawkes spotted her first and greeted her with a warm, friendly smile and a somewhat pointed 'Hey stranger!'

She smiled rather self-consciously at him. "I decided to venture out into the land of the living," she quipped.

He nodded, his expression gentle and understanding. "Way to go, girl," he said. "It's about time." He looked about, a slight frown creasing his forehead. "I think Danny's around here somewhere," he told her.

Lindsay nodded solemnly. "I know," she said, her tone weary.

"Something wrong?" Hawkes enquired, noticing her tense expression.

"No… we…" She distractedly ran her fingers through her hair and shook her head. "It's difficult sometimes," she explained. "It'll blow over."

Hawkes didn't look overly convinced at that, but he let it pass. "You want a drink?" he asked her instead.

Lindsay nodded. "Just a lemon soda, thanks," she said, grimacing a little. "Alcohol and anti-depressives don't exactly mix."

Sheldon reached out and squeezed her shoulder. "Your health's the most important thing," he said, keeping his voice low so that their conversation would not be overheard by those around them. "It's good that you came, Lindsay."

"Stella persuaded me," Lindsay told him. "And I'm not sure everyone would agree with you about that," she added, throwing a surreptitious glance in Rachel's direction. The red-headed cop and Flack's raven-haired girlfriend, Ellen had their heads close together and Lindsay just knew that the topic of their whispered conversation was her unexpected presence.

"Ignore them," Hawkes advised. "You've done nothing wrong."

"That's a matter of opinion, isn't it?"

Hawkes shrugged. "Danny played it straight down the line from what I heard," he said. "He broke things off with Rachel before he reconciled with you, didn't he?"

"Well yeah, I guess so, but he wouldn't have done that if I hadn't told him I still had feelings for him," Lindsay pointed out.

Sheldon sighed. "Lindsay – you were so unhappy, you made yourself ill. You really think Danny was immune to that? I know he had genuine feelings for Rachel, but a big part of his heart has always belonged to you. He moved on after your break-up because he had to for his own peace of mind, but it wasn't what he really wanted."

Lindsay blinked back the sudden tears that sprang to her eyes. "He's still so angry at me over it all," she confessed.

Hawkes nodded, not denying that fact. "You hurt him a lot, Lindsay. Don't underestimate the effect that had on him. He may act tough, but he has a deceptively soft centre when all is said and done."

"I know… it's just… he won't talk to me about it and I don't know how to get him to open up. Surely it's better to clear the air than carry on like this?"

Sheldon regarded her thoughtfully. "Is that what all the tension's about?" he enquired.

Lindsay nodded. "He's holding all those feelings in, Sheldon. Some of them escape every once in a while, but he always bites them back and every time he does, the wall between us just grows higher."

"He'll come around eventually," her colleague assured her. "Danny can be a stubborn fool at times, but he has a brain and he knows how to use it. It just takes a while for it to click into the right gear when it comes to emotions he doesn't know how to express. You just have to bide your time and be patient with him."

"I'm trying," Lindsay replied, "Honestly I am, but it feels like I'm banging my head against a brick-wall half the time. I don't know how much longer we can remain in this holding pattern before it starts to eat away at us." She sighed. "I'm sorry; I shouldn't be off-loading all this onto you. You didn't come here tonight to listen to my woes, and I didn't come here to confess them either. I just wanted to get out of the apartment for a while and enjoy an evening out with friends."

"And so you shall," Hawkes said, patting her encouragingly on the back. "I'll get you that drink. Hey Adam," he called out to their colleague, "Shift your butt and let the lady have a seat."

"W-what?" Adam stammered, looking up. His face split into a wide smile. "Oh hey Lindsay! Didn't know you were coming tonight."

"It was a last minute decision," Lindsay told him as he scooted along the scarred wooden bench to make room for her.

Taking a seat, she sat quietly beside him, listening to the varied conversation around the table before Adam finally turned his attention onto her. "That new cologne, tech boy?" she asked off the friendly grin he shot in her direction.

Adam blushed. "Ahh well, my… err… my cousin bought it me for my birthday and I thought I'd try it out."

"Oh," Lindsay replied, tongue in cheek. "Nothing to do with the presence of the lovely Miss O'Malley then," she said, referring to the Crime Lab's newest Lab Tech.

Descended from immigrant Irish, Sarah O'Malley had pale, milkmaid skin, bottle-green eyes and a short, tousled crop of strawberry-blonde hair. Sweet and unassuming, she'd earned Adam's respect and admiration within a couple of weeks, and Lindsay was fairly certain those sentiments were returned in equal measure. If she hadn't been so involved in her own personal dramas these past few weeks, she may have even tried her hand at a little match-making.

Well, there was no time like the present, she decided. At the very least it would take her mind off her own troubles for a while. "You should ask her to join us," she suggested.

"Ask who to join us?" Sheldon enquired as he returned with her drink.

"Sarah," Lindsay informed him, accepting the glass from his outstretched hand and taking a sip of the cool tangy liquid.

"Oh," Hawkes said, suppressing a grin. "Good idea. I'm sure she'd welcome being rescued right about now," he observed. He nodded over to where one of their fellow police officers had a rather wary-looking Sarah cornered. "Looks like Detective Roberts is trying out his moves."

Lindsay rolled her eyes. "Could he be any more predictable?" she remarked acidly, and then bumped her shoulder against her colleague's. "Go on, Adam," she encouraged. "She'll be forever in your debt, trust me. She may even marry you if you play your cards right."

"Say what?" Adam's eyes widened comically. "Whoa! Like… whoa!"

Lindsay giggled. "Stranger things have happened," she said. "I married Danny, didn't I?"

"Cus he rescued you from Detective Over-Eager?"

"It was a start," Lindsay said with a smile of remembrance. "I thought he was a bit of an arrogant jerk until then. The Knight-in-Shining-Armour routine kind of changed my opinion."

"Oh… right… well…" Adam swung his legs over the bench and stood, his face set and his eyes determined.

"Smooth," Hawkes commented once Adam was out of ear-shot.

"If I left it up to him, he'd be pushing forty before he asked her out," Lindsay said.

Hawkes laughed. "I'm not sure Adam's cut-in is going to be quite as effective as Danny's was though," he remarked.

"Doesn't matter," Lindsay replied with a shrug. "She'll just be grateful to regain her personal space. He's harmless enough, I suppose, but Miles Roberts does not know the meaning of the word 'subtle.'"

"So did it really change your mind?" Sheldon asked. "About Danny, I mean."

Lindsay smiled. "Not that per se," she admitted, "More the conversation we had afterwards. It made me look beyond my first impression of him to the man beneath. I was pretty tense those first couple of weeks on the job, and I took Danny's teasing the wrong way. I thought he resented me being there – everyone kept going on about what good friends he and Aidan were..."

Hawkes grinned. "I think it's a fair to say that you've had a significantly bigger impact on his life," he said.

"He loved her."

Sheldon nodded. "Yes, but not in that way. Maybe on the surface it might have seemed as if the two of them were a better fit than the two of you, but love doesn't work that way in my experience."

"Opposites attract, huh?"

"No, I think you have to find the right balance. Too different and it's difficult to gel with someone. A little too alike and you drive each other crazy. Danny and Aidan were too alike to be anything more than good friends. You and Danny have a better mix – enough in common to connect with each other, but enough differences to keep things interesting between you."

"Doesn't feel like we're doing all that much connecting right now," Lindsay said a little despondently.

"Maybe not, but look at it this way, you're still hanging on in there, aren't you? So your relationship feels a little fragile at the moment. That's understandable given everything you've been through this last year. Dig a little deeper and you'll realise it's really very strong. Not many couples could find the necessary tenacity to stick with it, you know. You should take pride in the fact that you have."

Lindsay nodded. "I guess we should," she agreed, her lips curling up into a small smile before she looked about with a slight frown as she realised that Danny was yet to return to the fold.

"Where has he gotten to?" she wondered out loud.

**OOOOOO**

_**The Men's R**__**estroom, around ten minutes earlier…**_

Glad that the bathroom was serendipitously deserted, Danny splashed cold water on his face and patted it dry with a handful of paper towels. His insides were still churning with the after-effects of his confrontation with Lindsay outside. Closing his eyes, he breathed in deeply, trying to restore some much-needed calm to his roiling emotions.

He'd thought he'd had everything under control that was the thing. He wanted this, wanted Lindsay. More than anything he wanted the two of them to make another go of things. What he hadn't counted on was the simmering anger he still felt towards her for ending things so abruptly between them. Most of the time he could let it go, but every so often it crept up on him unawares. It was the proverbial monster in the room, and at some point it was going to strike. He knew he was kidding himself thinking that they could just ignore it and move on, but he was scared of the consequences of letting those destructive emotions break free.

He wanted his family back, and his grasp on that dream was tenuous at best right now. Was love really enough? If he vented his anger, would it destroy the tentative bond that had only just been re-established between them? Cause a breach between him and Lindsay that could never be bridged? How could you love somebody so much, and yet hate them at the same time?

He shook his head. No, no, he didn't hate her. He hated what she'd done to him, how she'd made him feel – pathetic, useless, incredibly lonely. She'd reduced him to an empty shell of a man, made him question who he was, what he'd become. Nobody else in his life had ever caused him that level of emotion pain.

And yet somehow he'd dragged himself out of that pit of despair and built a new life for himself. He was a fighter at heart and wouldn't, couldn't quit. The potential for him to return to that dark time was always there in the background though, ready and waiting to swallow him whole if he allowed it to. That was what he was most afraid of, he realised with a lightening flash of clarity. Not that his anger would break them, but that Lindsay might turn around and throw it all back in his face. That she might walk away again and leave him once more gasping for his next breath.

He raked his fingers through his hair, spiking it in all directions. _'Come on, Messer, get a grip,'_ he lambasted himself. His righteous anger had faded and now he just felt like a fool – and a bit of a cad if truth be told. He'd left Lindsay standing out there on the sidewalk when he'd known she'd been nervous about how her presence would be received tonight. Had she braved the storm without him? Or had she retreated behind the barricades and gone home? Either way, she was facing it alone when he'd vowed to stand by her side and support her.

Pushing away from the sink, he turned for the door… and came face to face with Rachel and Ellen the moment he stepped out into the corridor. His heart sank – hadn't there been enough drama for one night?

"Well, if it isn't the man of the moment," Flack's girlfriend remarked acidly, her eyes cool and accusing.

"Ellen…" Rachel warned in low tones. "Just leave it alone okay?"

"But…"

"It's not your fight." Rachel cut in sharply, eyeing Danny out of the corner of her eye as she addressed her friend. Her tone softened. "Can you give us a moment please?"

"Sure," Ellen nodded, "I'm in here if you need me," she said, jerking a thumb towards the women's bathroom before retreating.

The moment they were alone, Rachel turned to face Danny. "Did you invite her?" she asked, her eyes burning into his. "Lindsay I mean?"

"W-what?" Danny flinched a little, struggling to find the appropriate words. "Umm no, no, I didn't…"

"But would you have done?" Rachel demanded.

Danny shifted uncomfortably and then sighed. "In time, yeah, I guess I would," he admitted. "Maybe tonight's a little soon after…"

"So what is she doing here then?" his ex interrupted before he could finish what he was saying.

"She's as much right to be here as you, Rachel," Danny shot back defensively.

Rachel scoffed. "Funny how she's never shown any interest in attending before now."

"That's not true," Danny countered. "She always used to come along. It was only after we split that she stopped doing so."

"So now it's my turn to back off and retreat into the background like a good girl, huh?"

Danny shook his head. "No, no, I don't want that. And I never wanted it for Lindsay either. I just stood back and let it happen. I suppose I thought it was easier that way, but I never considered the effect that would have on her. Whatever happened between the two of us, it shouldn't have impacted on her relationships with anyone else. It left her lonely and isolated when she needed support the most. I'm not sure I'll ever forgive myself for being so wrapped up in myself that I couldn't show one ounce of compassion towards her."

"You've no reason to feel bad after what she did to you, Danny," Rachel said, and then shook her head in exasperation. "And what the hell am I defending you for?"

She sighed. "This isn't easy for me, you know. I can't just shut off the way I feel about you and act like it's nothing. I know she loves you – that she's your wife, the mother of your child – but I can't help resenting her. If it hadn't been for her we might have found a way to make this work. You couldn't let her go because she wouldn't _let_ you let her go."

Danny sighed. "Maybe that's true, but would you really have wanted only part of me, Rachel?" he asked. "We had fun, granted, but when you really commit to someone, you've gotta know that you're the one-and-only. In time, if all this hadn't have happened, I may have gotten myself into a place where I could love that freely again, but it was too soon with you. I cared about you, you mattered, but…"

"I wasn't the one you wanted?"

"I don't think it was that cut and dried," Danny said, "But, in the end, the choice was easy, yes. Nothing to do with you, I assure you. Just everything to do with the fact that Lindsay was the woman that I chose to marry in the first place."

"So what? It was just luck of draw? Is that what you're saying?"

Danny shook his head with a glimmer of a smile. "Something like that I guess," he admitted. "I truly am sorry, Rachel. I went into a relationship with you with the best of intentions, I had no idea it was under false pretences. I thought I was ready, it's only in hindsight that I realise I was anything but."

"It's all right," Rachel said in a resigned tone. "It's not like I didn't always know you were still coming to terms with the breakdown of your marriage when we started seeing each other. I guess I just thought that if I stuck it out, things'd come right for us. Unfortunately for me it didn't turn out like that."

Danny nodded. "Look, me and Linds'll leave if it makes you that uncomfortable," he offered.

Rachel shook her head. "No, no, stay. You're right – we should make the effort to be adult about this. Just keep her away from me, okay? I'm not ready to be grown-up and civilised in that respect just yet. I can do this because I know that you never openly lied to me, but I don't believe she gave me a second thought when she decided on her dramatic u-turn. She went after what she wanted with no consideration for anyone but herself."

Danny knew Lindsay could never be as calculated as that, but he wisely held his tongue. Rachel was hurt and he couldn't hold that against her. He wished she wasn't choosing to make Lindsay the enemy in all of this, but he could understand why she would. It was easier to blame an outside party than accept that things weren't right in the first place. Their relationship hadn't been empty, it had possessed real substance, but it had never really been enough. There'd been friendship, passion and chemistry between them, but true love had been an elusive quality, because - whether he'd realised it at the time or not - his heart had been too broken to give to someone else.

Lindsay had been it for him – somewhere deep inside, he'd always been hoping that she'd change her mind, he just hadn't allowed himself to count on it because he knew that if that hope was never realised, it would break him. And that was why he couldn't let the fear of returning to that painful place break them now. Despite the strain on her emotional health, Lindsay was digging deep and facing her demons for him. It was time he returned the favour and faced his for her.

"Danny?"

He blinked as Rachel's voice interrupted his reverie. "I'm sorry – what?"

She glared at him accusingly. "Look I get why you don't want to say anything against her, but you've got to admit her timing did kind of suck. Just as things were starting to get more serious between us, it's like hey, you know what? That divorce I was so adamant about? I don't think I want to go through with it now after all."

"That's a little harsh, Rachel," Danny remonstrated. "There's a good deal more to it than that. Let's just say I wasn't whiter than white in any of this, and Lindsay has other issues that have influenced things."

"Like what?"

Danny shook his head. "That's Lindsay personal business; I'm not going to betray my wife's confidence. You'll just have to take my word for it that this runs deeper than a sudden, random change of heart."

Rachel huffed out her breath as she forcibly reined her emotions in. What good would it do to make a scene? It wasn't going to change anything, was it? Danny had made up his mind. There was no going back; he'd made that perfectly clear. Whether he and Lindsay worked things out or not, his relationship with her was over and she had too much self-respect to continue to chase an impossible dream.

"I don't think we should continue with this conversation," she said, her expression pinched. "It's only going to end badly. We've agreed to be as civilised as we can, so let's just leave it at that, okay? Maybe in time we can let bygones be bygones, but right now? This is as good as it gets."

Danny nodded. "All right," he said, his tone regretful. "I never meant to hurt you, you know."

"I know, but you did, Danny. I'd convinced myself that I didn't want any more from you than what you were ready to give. And maybe that was true in the beginning, but it wasn't by the end. I was really starting to believe that we could make a go of things and then this happens. It's hard to take - especially when everyone is so goddamn happy about it."

"That isn't true, Rachel…"

"Yes, it is, Danny. I'm not saying people aren't sympathetic towards me, but I'm acceptable collateral damage all the same. It kind of sticks in the craw if you want to know the truth."

"I don't know what to say," Danny told her helplessly.

"There isn't much you can say," Rachel returned wearily. "It is what it is. I'll get over it in time, I wasn't in so deep that I can't pull myself out of it, but I can't just shrug it off either."

Danny nodded. "So where do we go from here?" he asked.

"Well, I'm going to the bathroom," Rachel said as she side-stepped him. "_You_ can do whatever you like."

Danny watched her go with a resigned sigh, and then turned on his heel and went to rejoin his friends.

**OOOOOO**

_**The Women's Bathroom**__**, a couple of minutes later…**_

"You let him get away with it, didn't you?" Ellen asked Rachel as she emerged from one of the cubicles and crossed towards the sinks.

"Not exactly, but there's no point making things worse than they already are, is there?"

"You're too soft-hearted, Rachel."

"No, it's just… Danny never really lied to me, and whatever I feel about Lindsay personally, it's obvious she does genuinely love him. She _is_ technically still his wife after all, and there's little Lucy to consider, of course."

"That doesn't change the fact that you were wronged," Ellen pointed out. "A four year old isn't an excuse for what they did to you – no matter how cute she is."

Rachel sighed at the cutting tone of her friend's voice. "This is your boyfriend's best friend you're talking about, Ellen," she reminded her. "Maybe you should tone down the righteous indignation a little."

"Don doesn't have anything to do with it. You're my friend and friends stick together at times like this."

"We wouldn't be friends if it wasn't for Danny and Flack," Rachel pointed out, "But that's beside the point anyway. I don't want this to make things awkward between the two of you."

"I'm a big girl, Rachel," Ellen told her. "And Flack and I can agree to disagree. I think he's got enough of a brain not to suggest we double-date with them or something."

"See that's just it – you're gonna refuse to have anything to do with her on principle, aren't you?"

"Too right."

"But that's going to affect your relationship whether you like it or not. Don't put Don in the middle, Ellen, it isn't fair."

"So what? You want me to play nice with her?"

"No – just don't stir things up on my account. I don't want that on my conscience."

Ellen shook her head with a smile. "You're way too nice, you know that?"

Rachel laughed in spite of herself. "Not really," she said. "Oh, I know I'm being terribly adult about it all, but underneath? I totally want to scratch the little slut's eyes out, believe me."

"Now that's more like it," her friend pronounced as she smoothed lipstick over her puckered lips. "I was kind of getting worried. I never took you for a doormat and you were in severe danger of becoming one."

"I'm no push-over," Rachel said, retrieving a comb from her purse and running it through her mane of titian hair. "I just choose my battles wisely, that's all."

"Well, you can comfort yourself with one thing at least," Ellen remarked.

"What's that?"

Her friend grinned. "You've definitely got the better ass."

Rachel looked down over her shoulder at her denim-clad rear. "I do, don't I?" she agreed and then grinned rather wickedly. "Not to mention a far superior rack!"

"Well, that goes without saying," Ellen said flippantly and then shook her head. "God, we're such bitches!"

"I'm a woman scorned, I'm entitled," Rachel said with a defiant toss of her head. "And it's definitely made me feel better about things. I may have gotten dumped like a hot potato, but I can hold my head high even so."

Ellen tucked a companionable arm through her friend's. "So are you ready to re-enter the fray?" she asked.

"I think so," Rachel said. "Tonight's not gonna be easy, but I'm determined to get through it. And thanks Ellen, okay? I appreciate the support."

"No problemo. What are friends for, hey?"

**OOOOOO**

_**Meanwhile**__** in the bar…**_

"There you are," Flack said as Danny rejoined the group. "Where'd you vanish to?" He lowered his voice. "We have a new guest."

"So I see," Danny replied absently, his eyes on Lindsay, who was deep in conversation with Hawkes, Adam and Sarah O'Malley and so far oblivious to his presence.

"Did you know she was coming tonight?" Don asked.

"No," Danny shook his head and then looked his friend directly in the face. "Your girl's not exactly impressed by the whole deal."

"She and Rachel are friends, Danno," Flack said with a sigh. "And I can't complain about her being loyal to her friends."

"I appreciate that, but it's gonna make things awkward all the same."

"Yeah, I know. We'll just have to ride it out, I guess. It's not like I was planning to marry her or anything, is it?"

"No?" Danny asked with a grin and a raised eyebrow.

Flack shrugged. "You know me," he said nonchalantly.

Danny chuckled. "Yeah, I do. I also know that I used to say the very same thing about myself. When you fall, you're gonna fall hard, buddy," he warned.

"What? Like you did, you mean?"

"Yeah," Danny said reflectively, turning his gaze back on his wife. "Like I did."

"You two are going to work this out, you know," Flack assured him, sensing the underlying uncertainty in his friend's demeanour.

Danny shot him a sidelong glance. "You think?"

"I don't think, I know. You've just gotta get your head out your ass and make it happen."

Danny let out a self-deprecating laugh. "Well, there's nothing like telling it like it is," he remarked.

"I have a way with words," Don told him with aplomb, and then lightly thumped him on the shoulder in encouragement. "Go sweep her off her feet, Romeo."

"I think it's gonna take a little more than that," Danny replied, "But I guess it's a start."

Flack nodded and then raised his voice as he spotted Rachel and Ellen approaching from the other side of the bar room. "Hey guys?" he addressed the gathered NYPD employees. "It's past eight. Are we going to move this thing along? I haven't eaten in at least three hours and I'm feeling a little faint. I'm in the mood for Chinese if nobody objects?"

There was a general murmur of agreement, and Danny moved toward Lindsay as everyone began to rise to their feet and make ready to leave. "Here, let me," he said, taking her coat from her hands and holding it out for her.

"Thanks," she returned, a slight tremor in her voice as she threaded her arms into the sleeves and turned to face him.

Without thinking about it, he reached out to do up the buttons for her. "What?" he said, catching the quizzical look she shot him.

"Nothing," she said with a soft smile.

He sighed. "I'm sorry for losing it back there."

"It's okay," she said, absolving him first before stubbornly digging her heels in. "You can't keep bottling it up forever though, Danny. I won't let you."

"I know," he said. "I figured that one out for myself."

"Knew you'd get there eventually," she quipped with a slight smile.

"Funny," he responded sardonically. "Now's not the time though, Linds – and that's not an avoidance, okay?"

She nodded. "I know," she said and then stood on her tip-toes to press her lips to his.

He allowed her a chaste kiss before deliberately stepping back, casting an awkward glance over his shoulder as he did so. Thankfully their brief embrace seemed to have gone unnoticed.

"Sorry," Lindsay said, quickly guessing the reason for his discomfort. "I wasn't thinking. That was insensitive, wasn't it?"

"We can't hide what we are to each other," Danny said, "But let's keep it low-key for tonight, yeah? Rachel's not exactly happy about you being here."

"I thought you said that she'd accepted the situation," Lindsay said, a little dismayed.

"She has accepted it," Danny told her. "Mostly anyways – but she's still upset."

"And she blames me," Lindsay finished for him.

"It's a natural reaction, Lindsay."

She sighed. "Maybe we should go."

Danny shook his head. "No, we're staying. It's a bit of a minefield to negotiate I know, but avoidance isn't the answer."

Lindsay's eyebrows lifted at that. "No?" she asked pointedly.

Danny laughed in spite of himself. "Walked right into that one, didn't I?"

Lindsay grinned. "I think so, babe," she said as he guided her towards the door with his hand resting lightly in the small of her back.

Danny drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "We'll talk, I promise," he vowed.

Lindsay tilted her head back to look him in the eye. "Good, I'll hold you to that."

He nodded. "Let's just try and enjoy the rest of the evening first though, yeah?" he suggested. "Steer clear of any more drama."

Lindsay cast a speculative glance in Rachel's direction. "Somehow I think that might be easier said than done," she commented wryly.

Danny sighed, knowing that was more than likely true…

_**To be**__** continued…**_


	24. The Whole Truth & Nothing But the Truth

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hey! I'm still here and still writing… slowly! Anyway – here is a new part for you all - a rather long chapter title for something that is unfortunately a little shorter in length than usual. That's just where the chapter break naturally fell though.

Hope you enjoy! More Author Note's at the end – see you then :-)

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 24 – The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth**_

"So you want to come up?" Lindsay asked hesitantly of Danny as they came to a halt outside of Stella's apartment building later that same evening.

It was just shy of midnight and the others were probably still partying away at the club. Unlike them though, Lindsay had to get up in the morning to tend to her energetic four year-old, plus the strain of keeping up appearances had finally gotten too much for her. At the restaurant earlier, she'd felt like a bug under a microscope and Public Enemy Number One all rolled into one - despite the fact that she and Danny had prudently chosen seats at the opposite end of the table to Rachel, Ellen and Flack.

She understood Rachel's attitude towards her, of course, but she didn't like being made to feel like a boyfriend-stealing witch all the same. Because it hadn't been like that, she hadn't pursued Danny purposely, and certainly not out of any sense of spite towards the other woman. She'd simply confessed her continuing love for her husband and her growing regret over the breakdown of their once-happy marriage.

In the end, it was Danny who had made the ultimate decision. After first putting things on hold with Rachel, he had chosen to come to Montana to offer a gratefully-received olive branch to his estranged wife. All right so maybe she'd grabbed hold of it with both hands and held on tight, but that was only because she loved him so much. That wasn't a crime, was it? He was_ her_ husband after all, not Rachel's.

"Oh, I umm…" Danny, lost in his own thoughts, blinked at her diffidently-put question. "I should probably just…"

He broke off as Lindsay's face immediately fell. Her disappointment at his intended retreat was as plain as day. The poker face he'd lived with for most of their married life was well and truly gone now. It was a welcome change, Danny decided. It made her easier to read and, for a long time, he'd struggled with understanding the varying moods of the woman he'd chosen to share his life with.

"Well, I suppose I could be persuaded if there was hot chocolate on offer," he amended, his voice taking on a distinctive wheedling quality to soften his earlier faux pas.

Calmed by the effortless charm on display, Lindsay's previously tense expression quickly relaxed. "I think that could be arranged," she replied, thankful for his change of heart. She wasn't ready for the night to end just yet. She held out her hand to him in silent invitation and he slipped his fingers into hers, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze as he did so.

As they rode up in the elevator to Stella's apartment, Danny took a moment to mull over the evening's events in his mind. It had not been without its fair share of drama that was for sure. First, there had been the unexpected confrontation with Lindsay outside of Sullivan's, and then the probably more predictable one with Rachel inside. He had felt horribly stuck in the middle – genuinely sympathetic towards his ex but determined to remain loyal to his wife. It was a delicate balancing act – to stand by one whilst understanding the reactions of the other.

He wasn't the only one who had found tonight something of a trial though. He was astute enough to realise that it had been no picnic for Lindsay either. She'd relaxed enough to enjoy herself at Sullivan's and the restaurant afterwards, but her underlying insecurities had resurfaced with a vengeance once they'd moved on to the club. She'd retreated into her shell, had sat nursing her soft drink while those around her chatted, laughed and burned up the dance-floor. Her withdrawal was especially obvious because he knew how much she loved to dance. Many a night had been spent with the two of them throwing all their excess energy into the rhythm of the music – even before they were dating.

Looking back on it now, it had probably been pretty obvious how they'd felt about it each other right from the start. Dancing together had been a convenient excuse for close, physical contact and they'd revelled in it at every available opportunity. Moving together under the hot lights and thumping beat, they'd been lost in their own little world, attune to no-one but each other and oblivious to everything else.

God knows how many times he'd just wanted to crush his lips to hers and sample what was on offer, but he had always resisted the temptation, halted by some misplaced sense of propriety. Ultimately, he was glad that they'd waited, that they had gotten to know each other properly before they'd taken that next step, but it had been an incredibly frustrating experience nonetheless.

Unfortunately, with all eyes upon them, they hadn't been able to abandon themselves like that tonight. He had asked her to dance a couple of times, but she'd steadfastly refused, obviously not wanting to stir things up with such on overt display of the renewed connection between them.

He could understand her reasoning, of course, but felt that they really needed that release of tension right now. Their focus was very much about verbal communication at the moment, but there was something to be said for nurturing their unspoken connection too. Dancing may lack the emotional kick of sex, but on some levels it was just as powerful. It was the same merging of two bodies into one united entity. If one was out of step with the other, the rhythm was lost and it was that lost rhythm that they badly needed to regain.

He was starting to wonder whether their decision to abstain from physical intimacy was necessarily the right choice for them after all. Maybe it was putting a barrier between them that had no business being there? Conversely, the original reasoning behind their pact was still just as valid. Sex could cloud the emotions and they needed to keep their minds clear and free of all distractions if they wanted to permanently mend their broken relationship.

Entering the apartment a few minutes later, they were greeted by Stella, already dressed for bed in a pair of blue silk pyjama's and matching robe. "Hey! Did you have a good time?" she enquired.

"It was okay," Lindsay replied with a certain lack of enthusiasm. "Was everything all right here?"

Stella nodded. "I haven't heard a peep out of the little sweetheart all night," she said. "Each time I checked she was as snug as a bug in a rug." Narrowing her eyes, she looked at Lindsay penetratingly. "Is there something wrong?"

Lindsay shook her head. "No, no, it was just a bit awkward that's all. Rachel was there," she explained.

Stella's face creased in guilt and dismay. "Oh, I guess I never thought of that. I'm so sorry honey. I shouldn't have pushed you so hard to go out, should I?"

"No, no, it's okay," Lindsay quickly assured her. "I'm glad I went – honestly. It wasn't all bad. I had fun despite the inevitable awkwardness of the situation."

"Well, I'm glad," Stella said, relieved. Reaching out, she affectionately cupped Lindsay's cheek in her palm "Try not to worry so much, okay? It'll blow over eventually, I'm sure."

She stepped back. "Now, I'll say goodnight and leave you two to talk," she finished, laying her hand on Danny's forearm as she passed. "Sleep well."

"Night Stell'" Danny responded, waiting until she had left the room before he moved forward to encircle Lindsay in his arms from behind. "So about that hot chocolate…" he said, nuzzling his face into her hair.

Lindsay leaned back into his embrace, grateful for the timely display of affection. He'd barely touched her all night and she'd felt inexplicably bereft. It felt good to have his arms around her once again, to feel his warm breath ruffling her hair.

It still wasn't all it should be though, she mused as she led the way through into the kitchen. When they'd first been dating, it hadn't been hot drinks and gentle affection on his mind when they'd returned to one or other of their apartments after a night out. It had been something else entirely and it saddened her that she no longer seemed to be quite so irresistible to him in that respect.

"Do you miss it?" she blurted before she could stop herself.

"Miss what?" Danny asked confusedly.

"The thrill of the chase," she said, "The rush you get when you want someone so bad you just have to have them, no matter what?"

Danny grinned, his blue eyes taking on a decidedly wicked twinkle. "What exactly are you suggesting?"

She frowned at him in censure. "I'm serious, Danny," she protested.

He sighed, taking a seat at the table while she moved about the kitchen gathering what she needed for the promised hot chocolate. "Sometimes," he admitted candidly, "But there's something to be said for familiarity too. I think you just have to work at it more that's all. When everything's shiny and new, it's a novelty and it doesn't take much of an effort to keep things fresh."

"So you think we let things get stale?" Lindsay asked.

Danny considered for a moment before he answered her question. "I think we were in danger of doing so," he told her honestly. "The spark was still there, but it was beginning to get buried under everything else."

"And now?" she enquired as she stirred the warming milk in the pan.

Confused by her line of questioning, Danny shot her a quizzical look. "What is it that you want to know?" he asked carefully.

Lindsay sighed. "You've had that again," she pointed out, "You've experienced the excitement, the gloss of a new relationship, and now you have to…"

"Return to the matt of an old one?" Danny finished for her.

She averted her eyes from his piercing gaze. "I bet you didn't ask Rachel to make you hot chocolate when you got home at night," she remarked acidly.

Uncomfortable with the inherent truth in that statement, Danny shifted in his seat. "Look Lindsay…"

"You had sex with her," she cut in bluntly. "There's no getting around that. Obviously, it was good or the relationship wouldn't have lasted so long. That's something that I'm going to have to learn to accept, but it's not easy you know, thinking about you with her in that way."

"I can't take it back, Lindsay, and I'm not going to apologise for it either. You and I – we were over, done with. I was free to be with whoever I wanted to be - just as you were."

"I know that, that's not the issue."

"It isn't?"

"No. It's just that she's… well, she's considerably more built than I am, isn't she?" she pointed out, her cheeks burning with humiliation.

Even though it was probably highly inappropriate under the circumstances, Danny couldn't help but laugh at that. It was weird how women made such comparisons. Hot women came in all shapes and sizes as far as he was concerned. Yes, Rachel was distinctly more Jessica Rabbit in stature than Lindsay, but that was hardly the point.

"How is that relevant?" he said. "Let's face it; I'm not the traditional definition of a sex-god either. Do you look at me and see something lacking?"

"No, no, of course not!" Lindsay said, genuinely shocked by the suggestion.

"So why would I?" he rebuked, rising from his seat and crossing to join her as she removed the pan of milk from the flame and set it aside. "It isn't about your body shape; it's about who you are on the inside. You and Rachel, you're both sexy in your own different ways. Yes, I was attracted to her, but you…"

His eyes darkened as he pinned her with his gaze. "You want me to demonstrate how much I want you?" he said, his voice lowering seductively as he spun her around and deliberately trapped her against the counter-top with his body.

Lindsay felt as if the oxygen had been stolen from her lungs. "I… umm…" she stammered before her ineffectual stuttering was silenced by her husband's very determined kiss.

There was nothing gentle about the ensuing embrace. It was dark and wanton and full of repressed physical need. Lindsay's hands rose to clutch at Danny's back as he took her on a joyride through heaven to hell and back again.

"You're right, it was good with Rachel," Danny told her frankly when they eventually broke apart. "But it was nothing compared to you. Love changes everything. You think it's all about getting laid when you're young, but it takes experience to realise that there's so much more to it than that. I love you, I never really loved her. That's the difference. You are the only woman I've ever truly loved. That's why I…"

He stopped, drew in a shuddering breath as some deeply-buried instinct made him step away from her. "That's why I took it so hard when you kicked me out," he said, his gaze dropping to the linoleum floor at his feet as his hands fisted at his sides. "That's why when you filed for divorce, I felt like I'd been hit by a runaway freight train."

His gaze lifted back to hers, the pain of that moment starkly apparent in his blue eyes. "I hate you for making me feel that way," he told her with feeling, "For reducing me to that."

It was like a sucker punch to the gut and she couldn't prevent the defensive walls that immediately sprang up in retaliation. "It wasn't like that… I didn't… we agreed it was the best thing for us to separate, Danny."

"Since when did I have any choice in the matter?" he demanded hotly. "You'd made up your mind that we were over and that was that. Nothing I said made a blind bit of difference. It was non-negotiable as far as you were concerned. I moved out because the atmosphere was becoming intolerable and I didn't want it upsetting Lucy. And because I thought that if I gave you enough space, you'd eventually come to your senses and talk to me. I didn't think for one second that it'd end up being a permanent separation, god damn it!"

Lindsay's eyes filled with tears of remorse. "Danny…"

"Have you any idea what it was like getting those papers on my birthday?" he railed at her passionately. "Do you, huh?"

Lindsay visibly flinched. "Your birthday?" she said in horror. Oh God – could it get any worse? Wrapping her arms defensively around her middle, she rocked back on her heels in agitation. "I didn't… I couldn't… I thought that…"

"That I'd just get over it and move on?" Danny broke in; all the ugly resentments he'd kept locked away for so long escaping in a tidal wave.

Lindsay's guilty expression told him that was exactly what she'd thought and it cut deep into his very soul. Logically, he knew that it was her self-esteem issues that had caused her complete lack of faith in him, but right now, it felt like an unjustified slight against him as an individual.

"So what? You thought that I was just playing at being married to you?" he said, "That I never felt anything real for you at all?"

"I didn't know what I was thinking, Danny. It was all so mixed up in my head…"

"You cut me out of your life – out of my daughter's life…"

Lindsay shook her head in instant denial. "I never stopped you seeing Lucy. I never did that."

"No, of course not," Danny said, his tone rife with sarcasm. "You can't be faulted for doing your duty in that respect, can you?"

"What's that's supposed to mean?"

"You think it's the same? Being a part-time father when you're used to seeing your child every single day? I know I get to see her nearly as much as you _now_, but it wasn't like that in the beginning. You know it wasn't."

"You could have come over to see her more," Lindsay said in her defence. "I wouldn't have stopped you."

"Not directly you wouldn't, but you never once considered what it was like for me, did you? What it was like to be a visitor in my own home? To have my wife – the woman I loved – treat me like something nasty she'd just scraped off the bottom of her shoe? Have you any idea what it was like knowing that you only tolerated my presence because of Lucy?"

Danny's voice cracked then as his emotions got the better of him. He couldn't have prevented the tears that tracked down his cheeks even if he tried. "Don't you get it, Lindsay? You broke my heart! Damn near crushed it in fact!"

They were both crying now. Full of apology, Lindsay reached out for him, but he stepped back, shaking his head and warding her off with outstretched hands. Her heart broke. For him this time, not for herself. She hadn't seen. She'd been so blinded by her own pain; she'd been oblivious to his.

She felt such culpability. He'd not been blameless in their situation, but this had been her doing. She'd judged him solely on one event in their past, had chosen to ignore everything that had come before or since. She could see it clearly now. He'd made a mistake, hurt her terribly, but he'd learned from it and done everything in his power to make amends. Wasn't his reaction to her unexpected pregnancy a classic case in point?

After the initial shock had passed, he'd stood by her side – out of choice, not out of duty. He'd not just done what was expected of him, he'd approached the whole thing with enthusiasm and joy. He'd accepted her rejection of his initial marriage proposal, knowing the reasoning for it, and hadn't let it affect their continuing relationship. He'd waited until she was ready, just like he'd waited until she was ready when they'd first started dating.

Why hadn't she seen then what was obvious to her now? He'd cheated on her for sure, but it was a one-off occurrence not a flawed character trait. If he hadn't wanted her back, he wouldn't have pursued her so relentlessly. She'd told him she was in love with him. If he hadn't genuinely felt the same way then he would have let her go, would have allowed their fledgling relationship to die a natural death so that they both could move on.

She brushed at the tears cascading down her cheeks. "I can't take it back, Danny. I wish I could, but I can't."

"I guess that makes us even, huh?" Danny returned in a bitter tone.

"Are we keeping score?" Lindsay asked him sadly.

He shook his head. "No, no, I…" He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I don't know whether we can do this alone," he reluctantly admitted. "I thought that I could be the strong one, the one that held it all together, but it's not that simple."

"So what do we do?"

Danny sighed. "It's an alien concept, I know," he said wryly, "But I guess we ask for help."

"You want us to try counselling?"

"_Want_ might be too strong a definition, but yeah. I don't see as we have any other choice. I'm not sure we're going to make it through otherwise and I don't want to look back with any regrets. Pride comes before a fall, isn't that what they say? We're just gonna have to bite the bullet and go for it."

"All right," Lindsay agreed. "Just no couple's retreats, okay?"

Danny shuddered exaggeratedly. "Babe, I couldn't imagine anything worse," he said, seizing on the sudden lightening of the mood before his expression turned serious once more.

"I know someone," he told her, "Or at least I know of someone I could ask. If we're going to do this then it has to be with someone we can trust. I have faith in Simone's judgement and I hope that you have faith in mine."

"Simone?" Lindsay enquired. She hadn't heard the name before.

"Simone Fairbanks – she's a psychologist, I know."

Lindsay's eyebrows lifted knowingly. "An ex-girlfriend?"

Danny shook his head. "No, just a friend. She err… it was after 9/11," he explained awkwardly, "The police department had to draft in extra help."

Lindsay nodded and chose not to push for further information. For some, it helped to talk of their experiences of that fateful day. Danny wasn't one of them. He didn't repress it, but equally it wasn't a topic he willingly brought up. She knew his story and that was enough. There was no need to rehash it.

"She specialises in PTSD cases," Danny went on, "But I'm sure she'll be able to recommend someone suitable. Unless you prefer to ask Doctor Quinn?"

Lindsay shook her head. "No, I trust your judgement. Plus this Simone knows you personally, right? So she's not going to suggest someone you might not be comfortable with."

"This isn't just about me though, Linds," Danny pointed out.

"No," she agreed, "But we're two peas from the same pod in that respect, aren't we?"

Danny smiled at the apt analogy. "Yeah, I guess we are," he concurred.

Sensing a lowering of the barrier he'd put up, Lindsay moved in closer to him, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her cheek against his chest. She could hear his heart beating steadily under her ear and took comfort in the fact that his arms immediately rose to return her embrace.

"I'm sorry," she said with feeling. "About the divorce papers, I mean. I didn't know they would be served then, I never even thought about the possibility..." She sighed. "Which I suppose is just as bad, isn't it? It's not like I didn't know the date."

"You didn't mean it," Danny replied, kissing the top of her head. "That's all that matters."

"I guess I just blocked it from my mind," Lindsay went on.

"Why?" Danny asked.

Lindsay was silent for a moment. "Because that day was meant to be a whole new beginning for us," she eventually replied.

Danny remembered the inscription on the watch he'd found in her apartment after the fire: '_For Danny, Happy 36th, 1 4 3 4evr, Lindsay x.'_

Should he mention that he knew about the birthday gift that he'd never received? Understood the sentiment behind it?

No, he decided, not yet. If he did he would have to confess to the other items he'd discovered – her wedding and engagement ring – and, in the back of his mind, he had other plans for those. He just hoped that she didn't want the crates of her belongings that she still had stored at his place back before those plans came to fruition.

"All right so I admit it was pretty much the worst birthday ever," he said. "But let's just work on making the next one something to celebrate, yeah?"

"Look forward not back?" Lindsay enquired wistfully.

Danny stroked a hand over her hair. "I think there's got to be some looking back before we can properly move forward, but that's about the size of it, yeah."

Lindsay turned her face into his chest. "Are we crazy?" she asked. "Trying to back-track in this way? We were on the brink of divorce, Danny."

"A divorce that neither of us really wanted," he pointed out. "There's nothing wrong with admitting that we made a mistake; that we should have fought harder to keep things together. The travesty would have been if we'd have gone through with it."

Lindsay lifted her head to look up into his face. "You truly believe that?" she asked.

"Of course I do. Would I be standing here if I didn't?"

She shook her head. "No, no, you wouldn't."

"Well then."

She sighed and then shot him a small, conciliatory smile. "The hot chocolate's cold," she told him.

He smiled down at her, his hands absently rising to play with her hair. "I think I'll survive."

He kissed her forehead and then dipped his head to press his mouth to hers. The resulting embrace was gentle and sweet, but still had the capacity to make Lindsay feel dizzy and weak at the knees. This man induced both passion and tenderness in her. Why had she ever believed he wasn't the one?

She buried her face in the hollow of his throat when they drew apart. "I want you to stay," she said, tightening her arms around him as if that could hold him to her forever.

"You and me both," Danny replied.

Lindsay let out a resigned sigh. "It's a bad idea, isn't it?"

"Not necessarily," was the rather enigmatic reply.

Lindsay drew back, her expression astonished. "You've changed your mind?"

"About the no-sex-until-we're-sure thing?" Danny answered. "No, but I do think we need to find a way to re-establish some level of physical intimacy. I'm just not sure how to go about it exactly."

"Maybe we should wait until we've talked to the counsellor," Lindsay suggested.

Danny wrinkled his nose. "A horribly sensible idea, but unfortunately the right one," he concurred. Glancing at his watch, he sighed. "I should go. It's getting late."

"You on shift tomorrow?" Lindsay asked as they walked, fingers entwined, towards the door.

Danny grimaced. "Yeah, the late shift unfortunately – two till midnight. Not my favourite way to spend a Saturday night, I can tell you."

He regarded her with a speculative expression. "Tell you what though – how about you and Luce meet me for brunch beforehand?"

Lindsay nodded in agreement. "Sounds good," she said. "We've not done that in a long time – usual place?"

Danny grinned. "Where else? It's the best in New York."

"And child-friendly," Lindsay added.

"Always a bonus where Little Miss Wriggle-Butt is concerned," Danny concurred. "I never used to mind the kids in my bachelor days, but some people get unreasonably snotty I've noticed."

"They just don't know what it's like to be a parent that's all," Lindsay said. "Although, having said that, they probably have a point the way some kids are allowed to run rampant."

Danny smiled at her critical tone. "Good thing we're model parents then isn't it?" he quipped.

Lindsay smiled. "Well, I'm not sure I'd go that far, but we do expect certain standards of behaviour from her. Our daughter might be perpetually inquisitive but at least she's well-mannered with it."

"I guess it helps that she's a little charmer," Danny observed.

Lindsay grinned. "Now I wonder where she gets that from?" she teased.

"I can't imagine," Danny replied, all innocence, and then laughed. "It's genetics, babe. I can't help the character traits I was born with, now can I?"

Lindsay laughed. "And don't you know just how to use them to your full advantage," she said, leaning in to kiss him a final goodnight.

"Always worked with you," he murmured in a voice like molasses as his lips lowered to meet hers.

"You just keep telling yourself that and some day it might actually be true," she returned glibly, and then closed the remaining gap between them before he had a chance to respond.

Danny felt something shift inside of him as they kissed each other a tender goodnight. It took him a while to pin-point exactly what it was. Hope – a simple emotion, yet deeply profound. He'd wanted, but he hadn't let himself truly believe. There'd been too much of himself at stake.

Tonight's revelations had changed all that though. It was like a lead weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He could admit to vulnerability now, to not knowing all the answers. He didn't have to carry the entire load anymore. The burden of fear was shared, each of them bearing an equal responsibility for success or failure. Somehow that made things easier. He could be Lindsay's support, knowing that she would also be his. And when neither of them knew which way was the right way to turn, they would figure out the correct path… together.

_**To be**__** continued…**_

_**A/N2: **__I know you were probably expecting this chapter to continue with the Rachel/Ellen/Flack theme, and it was originally supposed to do so, but I ended up a bit stuck for inspiration there whereas the D/L stuff was flowing. Never fear – I will return to the aftermath of the Rachel-Danny-Lindsay triangle in chapters to come…_

_Bye for now – CharmedBec x_


	25. Small Steps

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes****: **Hey! Me again! Not so long a wait for an update this time around :-) Fingers crossed it continues that way...

Anyhow, hope you enjoy the show!

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 25 – Small Steps**_

_**Around **__**11 AM, the following morning…**_

When both her husband and her little girl looked up with near identical expressions of eager anticipation on their faces, Lindsay couldn't help but laugh in response. "Anybody would think the two of you hadn't been fed in a week," she remarked.

"Nothing wrong with a healthy appetite, babe," Danny said as the waitress set a fully-loaded plate down on the table in front of him. "Especially when you're getting a breakfast fit for kings," he went on expansively, eyeing his food with undisguised glee.

"And princesses," he added, reaching out and lightly tweaking Lucy's small button nose.

The little girl giggled at her father's antics, and then beamed up at the waitress as her own food was served. "Fank you."

'Mandy' - as her name badge proclaimed her to be – smiled. "You're welcome, honey. Y'all have a nice day now."

"She sorta talks like you, Mommy," Lucy commented as she reached out to pick up the maple syrup bottle. "Does that mean she comes from Montana?"

"Not too much," Lindsay warned automatically, knowing her daughter's propensity for drowning her pancakes in a veritable river of liquid sugar given half the chance. She reached across the table and steadied the little girl's hand while she poured.

"And no," she said in answer to her daughter's question. "She's not from Montana, she's from Texas."

"How do you know that?" Lucy enquired as she relinquished the bottle to her mother's hand and picked up her spoon.

"It's a different accent," Lindsay explained. "Do you want Daddy to cut those up for you?" she asked.

Her daughter nodded in response. "Yes pease."

"What's an accent?" Lucy asked as her father temporarily abandoned his own breakfast in order to deal with the mound of pancakes on her plate.

"It's when people who live in different places sound different when they talk," Lindsay clarified for her.

"Like Daddy, you mean?" Lucy said.

"Most definitely like Daddy," her mother concurred with a nod.

"Why do I get the impression there's an insult hiding in there somewhere?" Danny remarked with a touch of acid in his tone.

"Because you're paranoid," Lindsay told him dryly.

"It's okay Daddy, Mommy likes the way you talk," Lucy informed him innocently. "She told Auntie Stella that it was so damn sexy it made her insides melt like choc'late."

"Lucy!" Lindsay admonished as Danny broke into uproarious laughter. "When did you hear that?"

"This morning when you and Auntie Stella were talking in the kitchen."

"When you were supposed to be washing your hands and face, you mean," Lindsay returned with maternal censure in her voice.

"Yes, but I left Molly behind so I had to come back and get her," Lucy said, rushing to explain away her perceived transgression.

"You know you're not supposed to listen in on other people's conversations, don't you?" Lindsay tried to look stern although she was resisting the urge to laugh. Of all the things that Lucy could have overhead, it had to be that. Danny was never going to let her live it down.

"Yes Mommy," Lucy nodded earnestly. "I didn't do it on purpose, I promise." She frowned. "Is sexy bad?"

Aware of the blush staining her cheeks and doubly conscious of Danny's amused eyes upon her face, Lindsay shook her head. "No, no, it's not bad. It's just a grown-up word that's all. It's not a word that you should be using, all right? It's for Mommy's and Daddy's only."

"Okay," Lucy agreed amiably.

"Good then eat your pancakes," Lindsay instructed, swiftly discarding the subject so as to not draw undue attention to it.

Unfortunately – as she'd feared - her husband wasn't of the same mind. "Make your insides melt, do I?" he said, his eyes appraising her with deliberately suggestive intent.

"Ow!" he said, reaching down to rub at his shin when she kicked him under the table in retaliation. "What was that for?"

"You know," she told him primly.

He laughed. "So it's true what they say? Women really _do_ talk about everything?"

"Not always. It's just that Stella asked about last night." Lindsay dropped her eyes to her plate. "She umm… she heard us, you know…"

Danny nodded solemnly, realising she was referring to the more painful aspects of their evening rather than the pleasurable ones.

"I told her what we'd decided about the counselling and umm…" Lindsay flushed deeper with embarrassment. "I may have mentioned that I was finding things a little err… well, frustrating at the moment too."

"So the way I talk turns you on, huh?"

"Danny! Little Ears, remember?" Lindsay protested with a pointed look at their daughter, who was engrossed in her food and the cartoon playing on the TV in the corner. It didn't seem to matter that there wasn't any sound accompanying the pictures.

"Ack! She's not listening and she doesn't know what it means anyway." He waited, looking at her expectantly for an answer.

She wrinkled her nose at him. "Not as a rule, no," she said. "Just every so often when you err… get umm… purposeful."

Danny grinned, his blue eyes twinkling wickedly. "Purposeful?" he questioned.

"You know what I mean!"

"Oh yeah, I know what you mean," he concurred, his accent thickening without him even being aware of it.

Lindsay shivered. "Stop teasing me!"

Danny chuckled. "But it's so much fun."

Lindsay pouted. "For you maybe."

Danny smiled broadly. "Babe, you're not the only one taking several cold showers a day right now, believe me."

Reaching across the table, he caught her wrist in his fingers, pulled her hand towards him and bent to press a delicate kiss to the centre of her palm. "Look at it this way," he said, "It's good that we want each other, right? If we didn't, we'd be rebuilding a friendship not a marriage. And I don't know about you, but I want it all – a lover _and_ a best friend."

Lindsay nodded, knowing he was right. Despite her claims to the contrary, she was enjoying their increasingly overt flirting. It made her feel good, boosted her self-esteem no end. Her libido had been dormant for what felt like forever, but now it was coming out of hibernation with a vengeance. Sex with Danny had always been good, but due to the scars left by her past relationships, there'd still been part of herself that she'd held back. When she surrendered herself this time around though, it would be unreservedly, and without judgement or fear. She'd be laid bare, emotionally susceptible, but that was the point, wasn't it? Unless you allowed yourself that vulnerability, you could never truly be touched.

Danny's cell phone rang then, dispelling the mood and turning their attention to more everyday matters.

"Trouble?" Lindsay enquired, noting the rather strained look on his face as he glanced at the flashing display.

"Depends on your definition," Danny replied as he brought the ringing cell to his ear to answer it. "Hi Ma!"

".. .."

"Me? Right now? Umm – working."

Lindsay lifted an eyebrow at the blatant lie, unsure of the reason for it.

".. .."

"Tomorrow?" Danny sighed irritably. "No, look, Ma, I already told you, it's not my weekend for Lucy."

"Danny…" Lindsay started to interrupt, but he silenced her with a peremptory lift of his hand and a purposeful shake of his head.

Lindsay desisted, but she could hear her mother-in-law's raised tones from where she was sitting and a peculiar sense of foreboding washed over her in response. She'd gotten an inkling that relations were somewhat strained between Danny and his parents at present, but she hadn't realised how badly things had deteriorated. From the resigned look on Danny's face, she suspected it wasn't the first time he'd received such an ear-bashing from his mother.

"All right, all right… Geez! I'll ask, okay? Just no promises."

".. .."

"No, no, I'll call you. Look – I've got to go, alright? Duty calls."

".. .."

"Yeah, yeah, I will, I promise. Bye." Danny cast his eyes heavenward as he shut off his phone with an irritated snap.

"What was all that about?" Lindsay asked him.

He sighed. "It's a long story."

"We've got time," Lindsay pointed out. She glanced at her watch. "You've not got to be at work for a few hours yet."

Danny nodded. "I'm just not ready for her to know about this…" He gestured between the two of them, "…yet."

"Why not?"

"Because…" Danny broke off and glanced at Lucy sitting beside him. "Look – not here, okay?" he said. "We've got time to take her to the park after this, right? We can talk about it then."

"All right," Lindsay agreed, accepting his reluctance to discuss such matters in front of their impressionable young daughter. Their little girl soaked up information like a sponge, and had an unfortunate habit of repeating it at the most inopportune moment - as their conversation of a few minutes earlier had so aptly proved.

An hour or so later, they settled themselves on a wooden bench at the park while Lucy played happily with a little boy of around her own age nearby. "Look at me, Mommy!" she called as she stood at the top of the slide-and-climbing-frame combo, her arms held aloft and her little fingers spread wide. "I touching the sky!"

Lindsay grinned as Danny chuckled in amusement beside her. "So you are," she called to their daughter. "Are you going to slide down now?"

"'Kay," Lucy bobbed her head in agreement.

"Feet first," her mother warned, and then smiled indulgently as the little girl slid down the chute, squealing with delight.

"I go again," she announced when she reached the bottom, and then took off as fast as her little feet would carry her.

Danny laughed. "She's a human dynamo," he commented. "Do you reckon I should mention about abseiling down the front of Lady Liberty?" he asked her. "Now _that's _touching the sky!"

Lindsay rolled her eyes. "No, you definitely should _not_ mention it. I have enough trouble convincing her that taking a nosedive down the slide headfirst is a recipe for a skull fracture – especially when she sees some of the older kids doing it. She may be a little daredevil, but she's still only four. She doesn't have the same dexterity as they do."

Curling an arm around her shoulders, Danny leaned in to kiss her temple. "Did I ever tell you that you're the most amazing Mom?" he murmured.

"Danny!" Lindsay couldn't prevent the tears that pricked at the back of her eyelids at those words. She touched a hand to his cheek, her heart filled to bursting. He couldn't have given her a greater affirmation if he'd tried.

"I was so convinced I'd screw it up," she said with a shaky laugh. "And I guess I have in some ways…"

Danny's forehead creased in consternation. "How do you figure that?" he asked.

"This… us, the way we are. I gave up too easily on our marriage and she deserved so much better from me than that."

"You made it as easy on her as you could under the circumstances, Linds," Danny reassured her gently.

"Yes, but it shouldn't have gotten to this point, should it?"

Danny shrugged. "That's just life, babe. You felt what you felt, and there were reasons for the way you reacted. Despite everything, I think that we've been teaching our daughter a valuable lesson throughout all of this."

Lindsay stared at him incredulously. "It was good for her that we split? Is that what you're saying?"

Danny shook his head. "No, no, of course not. I'm just saying that she's learning that nobody's perfect – least of all her parents - and that if you really want something that badly then you have to fight your hardest for it and never give up."

Lindsay was silent as she absorbed that. "How come you always manage to look on the bright side of everything?" she eventually said.

Danny let out a weak laugh. "I don't. I've just learned that life's hard enough without expecting failure. I want to be the man that I promised you I could be when we got married, and that means looking beyond what's right in front of my face and striving for more."

"You _are _that guy, Danny," Lindsay told him softly. "You always were."

He shrugged. "Apart from one rather significant blip," he reminded her bluntly.

Lindsay didn't know what to say to that so she didn't say anything. Instead, she curled her arm through his and laid her head on his shoulder. He turned his head and kissed her hair, accepting the gesture in the forgiving spirit in which it was offered. "I'm not giving up," he murmured.

"Me neither," she vowed. She raised her head to look up into his face. "So tell me about your Mom," she said, deciding that a change of subject was in order.

Danny sighed. "Things haven't been great ever since we split," he explained, "And it got even worse after I started seeing Rachel. As my mother is so fond of telling me, she's ashamed to call me her son right now."

"But why?" Lindsay was confused. She could understand her mother-in-law not being particularly happy about the divorce - Rosa Messer had very traditional values in that respect – but to take it to such extremes didn't make any sense.

Danny shrugged, the motion outwardly nonchalant, but Lindsay knew him too well not to notice the deep hurt that lay behind the gesture. "You kicked me out and she drew her own conclusions about the reasons for that," he told her dully.

Lindsay was shocked. "But didn't you set her straight?" she asked.

"What was I supposed to say, Lindsay?" Danny replied. He turned his gaze on her face, his blue eyes shrouded in misery. "I couldn't in all honesty claim total innocence in that respect, could I?"

The truth of that was a dart to Lindsay's heart. She looked away, trying to quash her unwanted reaction to the resurfacing of the past hurt. "Well no, I guess not, but still…"

"My mother believed what she believed. There was nothing I could do to change that."

"But she knows you…"

"Yeah, she does," Danny cut in with a bitter laugh. "She knows all too well my capacity for screwing up my life. My baseball career, for instance, my chances of promotion that time... She figures I'm finally getting it right – I meet a nice girl, okay so getting her pregnant out of wedlock wasn't part of the plan, but that's all smoothed over with a timely ring on the finger. I've got myself the whole deal - a beautiful wife, a gorgeous baby girl, and then what do I go and do? Mess it all up for a cheap piece of ass… Well, that's her theory anyway."

"You've gotta let me talk to her…"

"No," Danny said firmly. "For one, I don't want her turning this around on you, and secondly, my mother has no concept of staying in the background. She's genetically pre-disposed to interfere. She's not going to be quietly supportive like your Mom and Dad, she's gonna be in our ear about it all the time. I love her, I do, but we really need our space right now. I'll let her know when the time is right and not before."

Lindsay couldn't let it go at that however. "I hate that I've caused so much strife between you," she said with feeling. "You used to be so close."

Danny sighed. "It's not all bad, Linds. She loves me, I know she does, and when all is said and done, I know she'd be there for me if I ever really needed her. Yes I get the 'you're utterly irresponsible and it's time you grew up' lecture every time I see her at the moment, but it'll calm down eventually. Lucy usually softens her up. She's a total marshmallow when it comes to her beloved grand-daughter."

"So what's tomorrow?" Lindsay asked him.

"Uncle Carlos' sixtieth birthday," Danny replied.

"And she wants Lucy to be there."

"Well yeah, but she'll just have to accept that's not possible, won't she?"

"Or you can avoid the hassle and take her with you," Lindsay suggested.

"But it's your weekend," Danny protested.

"I know, but I don't think it's necessary for us to be so rigid about that anymore, do you?" she said. "Not given where we're at in our relationship at the moment. I mean, technically, you shouldn't be here with us right now should you? And last weekend, I shouldn't have gone with you to that puppet show either."

Danny nodded. "All right so I agree that we can be more flexible with the custody arrangements," he said, "But there's no reason for you to miss out on time with Lucy just because my mother is making unreasonable demands."

"Danny," Lindsay chided, "She wants her only grandchild there at an important family event. That's perfectly understandable."

Danny sighed, rubbing an agitated hand across his face. "Yeah, I know, I know," he agreed. "Look, I'd suggest you came along too, but that'd be kind of letting the proverbial cat out the bag, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah," Lindsay agreed with an incline of her head. "How are you going to stop Lucy from spilling the beans though?"

"We already had a little talk about that. She's on board with it just being our secret for now. I think she sees it as some sort of game. She thinks we're planning a real special surprise for Nonna."

"Sneaky," Lindsay commented with a smile.

"I have my moments," Danny returned with aplomb.

"So umm, did you call your friend?" Lindsay asked in a hesitant tone.

"My friend?" Danny looked at her confused.

"The psychologist."

His expression cleared as understanding dawned. "Oh Simone, you mean. Yeah, this morning. I left a message on her machine. She's not got back to me yet, but she will."

"I didn't ask last night, but how come you've never mentioned her before?"

"She moved away 'bout six months before you came to New York," Danny explained, "Got a job out in San Francisco. We stayed in touch via the occasional email, but we weren't in regular contact. She returned back East about ten months ago and we met up again." He paused for a beat. "She's just a friend, Lindsay," he assured her. "I already told you that."

"I wasn't implying anything else," Lindsay replied defensively.

"No, but you were wondering. You're welcome to meet her if it bothers you. In fact you probably should meet her."

"Why?"

"Did you sign up for that counselling Doctor Quinn recommended?"

"Well no, I was going to, but I haven't gotten around to it yet," Lindsay said. "Isn't it overkill if we're going to relationship counselling as well though?"

"No, that's about us, this is about you. I told you Simone specialised in PTSD – maybe she can help you find a different perspective on things."

"I'm feeling a whole lot better than I did," Lindsay said, procrastinating a little.

"All the more reason to make sure it stays that way."

Lindsay sighed. "What about you?" she countered. "Have you done anything about the support group Doctor Quinn mentioned?"

"I went last week," Danny told her.

Lindsay's eyes widened in surprise at this unexpected admission. "You never mentioned it," she said.

Danny shrugged. "I didn't want to until I was sure how it was all going to pan out. It was okay, I guess - just a group of guys meeting up for a few beers as the doc' said."

Lindsay smiled. "So not too touchy-feely then?"

Danny laughed. "No. I'm still not completely sold on the idea, but I figured I'd go along to a few more sessions before I made up my mind one way or the other."

"So what was the problem?" she asked.

"Their issues just seemed so much worse than mine," he told her with a shrug. "This one guy – his wife is hospitalised on a regular basis. She'd just been sectioned again the previous week. My own worries seemed to pale in comparison to that."

Lindsay nodded and then sucked in a deep breath to gather her courage. She owed him the honesty, however difficult and humiliating it was to admit. "My depression's been worse, Danny," she told him quietly. "I can't imagine ever returning to that place, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility. And maybe that was just an extreme case that you heard about. I'm sure there are guys there who can relate more to our situation – Doctor Quinn wouldn't have recommended it otherwise."

"Yeah, I figured that," Danny said, and then looked up as Lucy came running over to them, her face a mask of childish indignation. "What's up, sweetheart?"

"Those big boys won't let me an' Sam play on the roundabout," she complained. "They're making it spin too fast."

Danny glanced over to where a couple of kids no more than eight were having the time of their lives making themselves phenomenally dizzy. He could have waded in there and defended his daughter's honour of course, but he figured a more diplomatic approach was in order.

"I'm sure they'll get bored soon enough," he said. "Why don't you and Sam play on something else until they do? You could be race car drivers," he suggested, nodding at the brightly-painted toy vehicle nearby.

"But if you showed them your cop badge, they'd _haft_ to do what you say," Lucy said with simple child-like logic.

"Or maybe you could wait your turn like a good girl," her father countered.

Lucy's face scrunched up in immediate protest. "But…"

"Do you want to do as you're told and play some more? Or do you want to make a fuss and leave right now?" Danny cut in before she could get any further.

It was something of an internal battle, but reason eventually won out. "Me an' Sam'll play race cars," Lucy decided with a sulky pout.

"Yeah, thought you might," Danny replied. "Off you go then," he said, chivvying her along.

He shook his head in amusement as Lucy ran off. "Can you imagine what Mac would have said if I terrorised those poor kids with my badge?" he remarked to his wife with a chuckle.

"What?" he asked when he caught the rather amazed look that she was casting in his direction.

"Since when did you turn into such a strict disciplinarian?" she asked.

"I guess since I've had to deal with the consequences of my previous leniency," Danny answered. "When she's with me, I'm solely responsible for everything that she does. It was different when we were together. You were always around to pick up any balls I may have dropped. After one too many out-of-control temper tantrums though, I figured prevention was a whole lot better than cure."

"Well, it's nice to know I don't always have to be the bad guy," Lindsay remarked.

"I guess I used to let her get away with a lot, huh?" Danny admitted somewhat ruefully.

Lindsay smiled. "You weren't _that_ bad, and she was only three at the time. It's important that we're on the same page in that respect now though."

"Well, you don't need to worry… damn!" he broke off as his cell phone began to beep.

"Mac?" Lindsay enquired as he looked at the display.

Danny nodded. "DB out on Staten Island. He wants me to go straight there. Stella is gonna transport the kit." He glanced at his watch. "I'm not on shift for another hour."

"It's gonna take you nearly that to get there," Lindsay pointed out.

Danny sighed. "Guess that's family time over with then," he remarked despondently. "I'll just go and say goodbye to Luce," he said, standing up and heading over to his daughter.

Lindsay watched as he bade farewell to Lucy with a hug and a kiss, and then rose to her feet as he strode back towards her. "What time you gonna pick her up tomorrow?" she asked.

"Around eleven, eleven-thirty?" Danny replied.

Lindsay nodded. "I'll have her ready," she told him. Stepping in closer, she placed her palms against his chest and tilted her head back to look up into his eyes. "Bye," she said as he cupped her face in his hands and dipped his head to plant a chaste kiss on her upturned lips.

"I'll call you later," he said, and then kissed her again before finally stepping back. "You and Lucy have fun."

"Stay safe," she called out after him as he turned for the gate.

He smiled. "No reckless moves, I promise," he assured her, lifting his hand in farewell.

Lindsay watched him go until he was out of sight, and then crossed the grass to her daughter. "Ten minutes, Lucy," she warned the little girl.

"Are we going shopping?" her daughter enquired.

"For a little while," Lindsay replied, "And then do you want to go to the movies?"

Lucy nodded enthusiastically. "Can we have popcorn?" she asked.

Lindsay smiled. "I think that can be arranged," she answered.

"Cool!" her daughter declared. "I love you, Mommy!"

Lindsay's heart skipped a beat as it always did when she heard those words from her baby's lips. "I love you too, sweetie," she said, affectionately ruffling the little girl's honey-blonde hair. "I love you too."

**OOOOOO**

_**Half an hour later…**_

"You're a popular boy today, Messer," Danny murmured under his breath as his cell phone rang yet again.

"Messer?" he answered. He didn't bother to look at who was calling, assuming it was one of his colleagues checking up on how much longer it was going to take him to get to the crime scene.

"Danny?" a familiar voice returned his somewhat curt greeting.

"Simone hey!" His face relaxed into a smile. "You got my message, huh?"

"Yeah and I'm intrigued. Since when does Mr Reticent want my professional advice about something?"

He grinned. "I've decided to get in touch with my feminine side," he quipped.

Simone laughed. "And I'll believe that when I see it," she countered cynically. "So what's up? Rough case?"

"No, no, it's more a personal matter."

"You and Rachel on the rocks already? I thought the two of you seemed well suited when we last met."

"We split."

"Ahh geez! I'm sorry. Me and my big mouth, huh? I swear no-one would believe I was a psychologist without reading the certificate on my wall. I seem to have a permanent case of foot-in-mouth disease most days."

"You can't be professional all the time," Danny told her soothingly, "And me and Rachel breaking up? It's actually a good thing in a roundabout kind of a way."

"It is?"

"Hmm – I told you about Lindsay, right?"

"The ex-wife," Simone recalled from previous conversations.

"Turns out not-so ex-wife," he informed her succinctly.

There was a short silence. "Well, that's kind of out of the blue, isn't it?" she said. "I thought the divorce was all but signed and sealed."

"A lot has happened in the last couple of months." Danny told her. "I… I never really stopped loving her, Simone," he explained after a beat. "I just thought there was no hope for us so I forced myself to move on…"

He sighed. "Anyway, long story short – we've decided to give things another go, but we've got a lot of issues to work through and we've come to the conclusion that we're gonna need some professional help with that."

"I'm not a couple's counsellor, Danny."

"I know – I didn't mean you, that'd be weird. We're not keen on just randomly picking someone out of the phone-book though, there's too much at stake. I was hoping that you could recommend someone."

Simone thought about it for a moment. "I may know of someone suitable," she said. "She doesn't exactly do things in the traditional way, but I think her approach'd be more your style anyway. She's got to be right for both of you though. Maybe if I meet Lindsay? Talk to her some - it'll help me make a better assessment. Can the two of you make an appointment at my office around five on Monday?"

"I'll have to check, but I don't see why not," Danny replied. "I wanted you to meet Lindsay anyway. Umm… she has some issues that have contributed to our problems. Issues that are a result of certain events in her past. It makes her susceptible to depression – a fact I only learned of recently incidentally. She's having a rough time of it at the moment, and the doctor recommended counselling. She's a little bit reluctant because she's had a lot of therapy already and doesn't see how more is going to help. I hoped that if she met you, liked you…"

"She'd be persuaded otherwise?"

Danny nodded, although she couldn't see him. "Pretty much, yeah."

"What kind of events?" Simone enquired.

"Err…" he hesitated, unsure of whether he should say anything without Lindsay's express agreement.

"Whatever you tell me is strictly confidential, Danny," his friend assured him.

"When she was fifteen, her three best friends were shot and killed right in front of her. Maniac opened fire in the local diner, Lindsay was the only survivor."

"Jesus!" Simone exclaimed. "Now that _is_ more my field of expertise."

"Exactly. She's the strongest person I know, Simone, but that night has left its scars on her nevertheless. Scars that have been deepened by two of her previous relationships ending badly and… and by me too. I err… I went through a bad time around six years ago – my neighbour's kid was shot and killed while he was in my care. I pressed the self-destruct button big style, shut Lindsay out. It was still fairly early days in our relationship at the time, and I didn't really know how to talk to her…"

He paused and then forced the confession past the guilty lump in his throat. "I slept with someone else," he admitted. "Biggest damn mistake of my life, and it completely shattered the trust between us. She forgave me, we moved on, but I don't think we ever really managed to regain that lost trust. We kind of swept it all under the carpet, pretended it never happened, that it didn't matter because it was before we were married, before we had properly committed to each other. When things got rocky between us, it came back to bite and we couldn't get past it."

"And you think you can now?"

"A lot more has come to light since then. As I said, I didn't know about her depression, didn't really know the full story of her past either. I knew nothing about her previous relationships. She's talking to me now, but there's a lot still left unsaid between us. All I know is that we've finally knocked down the walls that were keeping us apart and I have faith that we can get through this and rebuild our marriage. She's my best friend, Simone, always has been, almost from day one. As long as we keep talking to each other, I'm sure we can make it. It's what we both want – for our own sakes as well as Lucy's. We're determined to fight for this."

"Then you're halfway there already," Simone assured him. "Look – I've got to go – my next client's here. I'll see you Monday at five, okay?"

"Sure – see you then. And Simone?"

"Hmm?"

"Thanks for listening, I appreciate it."

"No problem. What are friends for, hey?" she said.

Disconnecting the call, Danny began to scroll through his address book for Lindsay's number, but his cell phone rang again before he located it. Stella this time – obviously checking up on his ETA.

"I feel like I'm being stalked," he said as he answered the phone.

"This is the first time I've called you," Stella retorted.

"I know, but my phone hasn't stopped ringing all day. I'll be there in around ten minutes, okay? What we got?"

"Vic – male – around thirty years of age. Stabbed repeatedly in the chest and abdomen," Stella told him. "No obvious sign of forced entry as far as I can tell."

"Crime of passion then?" Danny postulated.

"Looks like, but I'm not making any assumptions until all the evidence is in. You want the body or the scene?"

"Err… I'll go with door number two if it's all the same to you."

"Fine by me. Just get your ass here, pronto, 'kay?"

"Yes ma'am," Danny replied automatically. "I'll see you in five," he said as he quickened his walk to a jog and shut off the phone.

He'd have to call Lindsay about the counselling later. Right now, duty called and he needed to give it his undivided attention. Until everything at the scene was bagged and tagged, personal matters would unfortunately have to wait…

_**To be**__** continued…**_

_**That's all for now, folks. See you next time! CharmedBec x**_


	26. Retrospection

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes****: **Hi! Me again :-) Work/Life balance is slowly getting back to normal so here is another update. There's some naughty bits in this so be warned. Hope you enjoy!

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 26 – Retrospection**_

What with one thing and another, Danny didn't get to talk to Lindsay about his conversation with Simone until the following morning when he arrived to pick up Lucy for the family party.

"Hi Daddy!" his daughter greeted him animatedly at the door, all smiles and overflowing enthusiasm. "Do you like my new dress? Mommy and me bought it yesterday." She twirled for effect and then waited expectantly for his verdict.

Teasing her, Danny took his time in replying, tapping his chin thoughtfully as he umm'd and aah'd in deliberation. In keeping with the autumnal season, the dress was long-sleeved and knee-length, plus she was wearing a pair of cream leggings underneath it for extra warmth. The geometric design on the bodice was a riot of contrasting colours, but the material of the rest of the garment was a rich turquoise hue – a colour which complimented her big blue eyes and honey-blonde waves to perfection.

"You look gorgeous, sweetheart," he eventually declared, hauling her up into his arms and planting a loud buzz of a kiss on her lips.

Lucy beamed as she wrapped her little arms around his neck and returned his heartfelt embrace. "Mommy bought a new dress too," she informed him.

"She did? I bet she looks pretty in it, huh?"

The little girl nodded, her curls bouncing with the movement. "Real pretty," she agreed. "You could take her out on a special date so she could wear it," she suggested artfully after a brief pause.

Danny grinned. "I could, that's true." He winked at his wife salaciously. "So how about it, darlin'? You gonna get all dressed up for me?"

Lindsay rolled her eyes in a long-suffering manner. "If you manage to come up with a better line than that, I might just consider it," she responded dryly.

Danny laughed. "I talked with Simone," he said, as he set Lucy back down on her feet again. "She asked if we could go and see her tomorrow at five – can you make that?"

"Why does she want to see us?" Lindsay asked with a frown.

"So that she can recommend someone she feels is right for both of us rather than just me," Danny explained.

"Oh, okay," Lindsay said, still a little unsure about the whole thing. For some reason, she was distinctly nervous at the idea of meeting Danny's psychologist friend. Maybe because she felt that the other woman might judge her lacking somehow. If she'd been back in town for ten months then she must have met Rachel at some point, plus heard enough about the divorce proceedings to form a not necessarily favourable opinion of Lindsay herself.

"I don't finish until five," she said slowly, "But I guess I could ask Mac if he'll let me off work a little earlier. Where's her office?"

Danny gave her an address that was only a couple of blocks from the CSI Building in Manhattan. No backing out with an 'it's too far away' excuse then, Lindsay thought resignedly.

"Okay, I'll be there," she reluctantly agreed. "I'll ask the babysitter to stay on for an extra hour or so. It shouldn't take any longer than that, should it?"

Danny shook his head. "No, I don't think so." Sensing her ambiguity, he reached out and lightly stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. "It's gonna be okay," he assured her.

Lindsay let go of the breath that she hadn't been aware she was holding. "I guess I'm kind of nervous," she admitted.

"Why?" he asked, as he drew her into his arms and rested his chin on top of her head.

Wrapping her arms around his waist, Lindsay snuggled in close, burying her face against the hollow of his throat. "I want this to work so much, and I'm afraid…" She closed her eyes as her voice faltered. "I'm afraid that therapy'll reveal things that'll tear us apart again," she finally confessed.

"You hiding some deep, dark secret, Montana?" Danny asked with studied lightness.

Lindsay tilted her head back to look up into his face. "No, I just…" She stopped and shook her head, exasperated with her inability to explain how she was feeling. "I don't know."

"I think we've already made it through the worst of it," Danny said, smoothing a gentle hand over her hair and lightly kissing her forehead, "But if it makes you feel any better, I'm as scared as you about how this might affect things between us."

"You are?"

"Of course I am. Just because I believe this is the right thing for us to do, doesn't mean I don't have concerns about it."

"I suppose I thought it was just me," Lindsay admitted.

"Well, think again," Danny told her. "We're in this together, babe."

"Go team!" Lindsay quipped with a lopsided smile.

"Exactly," Danny said, and then drew her up onto her tip-toes and kissed her firmly on the lips to seal the deal. He then turned to look at Lucy, who had returned to the jigsaw puzzle she'd been previously assembling while her parents had been talking.

"Okay munchkin. You ready to go?" he asked.

"I still got free pieces left," she told him, her brow furrowed in concentration as she turned one of them this way and that, trying to figure out where it fit. A gleam of satisfaction entered her sapphire-blue eyes as she hit upon the right configuration and pushed the wily piece of cardboard into place.

"I'll get her things," Lindsay said.

Danny nodded at her absently, and then went to help his daughter finish her game. Sitting down on the floor beside the little girl, he picked up one of the remaining pieces. "Okay let's see… what are we making?"

"It's the seaside," Lucy told him, picking up the box lid and showing him the coastal scene on the front. "All the h'animals are having a picnic, and Sally and Simon are sailing in the sail boat."

"Ahh right, and who's this?" he said, pointing at the distinctive face on the puzzle piece he was holding.

"Mrs Rabbit."

"And what's she doing?"

"Pouring juice for everyone," Lucy replied after a quick glance at the picture on the box. "There!" she said, snatching the piece from his hand. "It goes there!"

Danny smiled as she fit it into place, and then watched with fatherly pride as she made short work of the rest of the puzzle. "Yay! High Five!" he said enthusiastically when she was done, holding up his hand so she could slap her little palm against his bigger one.

"I did it!" Lucy beamed at him in triumph. "Mommy, I did it!" she informed her mother as she re-entered the room with a small back-pack and a bundle of clothing draped over her right arm.

"Wow! That's great, sweetie," Lindsay enthused warmly. Sitting down on the sofa, she held up Lucy's coat. "Now listen – I want you to be a good girl at Nonna's, okay?"

"Okay Mommy," the little girl agreed as she threaded her arms into the sleeves of her jacket, and then obediently stood still while Lindsay zipped it up for her. "Why aren't you coming too?" she asked with a puzzled frown.

"Because I wasn't invited," Lindsay explained a little awkwardly.

Lucy's expression cleared at that. "But Nonna wouldn't mind if you came," she told her mother confidently.

"Lucy – we talked about this," Danny interjected, perching on the arm of the sofa while Lindsay bundled up their child in a woollen bobble hat and scarf.

"Oh… yes… Ssh!" The little girl put her finger to her lips with a mischievous smile. "It's a secret!" She giggled.

"Remind me why I thought she wouldn't blab again?" Danny remarked dryly to his wife.

Lindsay smiled, and then bent to pick up the back-pack from the floor by her feet. "I've put in a change of clothes in case she spills something down herself," she said as she handed it over. "And there are some books and toys in there too."

Danny nodded and then sighed heavily. "You should be coming with us," he said, his voice filled with regret. "It doesn't seem right to leave you behind."

"I'm a big girl, Danny," Lindsay told him. "I'm perfectly capable of keeping myself occupied for a few hours."

"Yes, I know but…"

"You said it wasn't the right time to tell your parents," she reminded him.

"I know, and it isn't. That doesn't mean I don't feel bad though."

Standing up, Lindsay leaned over to give him a one-armed hug. "Look - I appreciate the sentiment," she said, "But don't worry about it, I'll be fine."

Drawing back, she kissed him softly on the lips. "Now go, or you'll be late," she said, touching a light hand to his face before she knelt down to kiss Lucy goodbye.

"Bye Mommy, I love you lots," the little girl called as she walked hand-in-hand with her father to the door. She looked up at Danny. "Do you fink Nonna will let me bring back some birthday cake?" she asked.

Danny grinned down at her. "I'm not sure; we'll have to ask her, won't we?" he said as they stepped out into the hallway and headed off down the corridor towards the elevators.

Pushing the door shut behind them, Lindsay drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to calm her turbulent emotions. She'd told Danny it didn't bother her to be left behind, but that wasn't entirely true. She desperately needed to feel a proper sense of family with him again, and was finding their separate living arrangements increasingly difficult to endure.

It was the simple togetherness that she missed the most. It wasn't until you had to do without it that you realised how vital it was to your sense of well-being. To know that there was someone at home waiting for you to return, it fulfilled you somehow. She didn't want a boyfriend; she wanted a husband, a permanent partner in life. And while things were still in limbo between her and Danny the way they were, she didn't have that.

She shook her head, trying to banish the negative thoughts and focus her mind on the positive. She and Danny were making slow and steady progress in rebuilding their relationship, and rushing back into living together could easily end up being a costly mistake. Marriage wasn't a hundred metre sprint, it was a long meandering hike through differing landscapes, some rocky and rough-going, others beautiful and serene. She would do well to remember that.

With a determined effort, she shook off her downbeat mood and decided to make the most of the precious 'me time' she'd been gifted with instead. She could go to the day spa, she decided. Treat herself to a massage and other self-indulgent beauty treatments. She deserved a little pampering, didn't she? Maybe she'd call up her friend Megan too, see if she wanted to join her. Girly treats were always so much more fun when you had someone else to share the experience with…

**OOOOOO**

It wasn't until he'd said the words out loud that he'd realised how true they were, Danny thought to himself as he boarded the Staten Island Ferry with an excited Lucy at his side.

He _was_ scared about how the couple's counselling might affect his and Lindsay's still somewhat fragile relationship. Whereas his wife's concerns appeared to be more general in nature however, his worries all came from one specific source:

His long-ago tryst with Rikki Sandoval.

There would be no further avoiding of that old wound once they were riding the therapy train. The trouble was he wasn't sure what he was supposed to say. There were no excuses for what he'd done. Sure, he'd been in a bad place emotionally, but that didn't mean a great deal when faced with the question of exactly why he'd travelled down such a hurtful path. If he didn't know the answer to that himself, how was he supposed to explain it to Lindsay?

He couldn't, and that was his dilemma. There was no reasonable justification for his betrayal of trust. Would it always be something that lay between them therefore? A deadly thorn amongst the sweet-smelling roses, a monster ready to rear its ugly head when they least expected it? He hated to think so, but knew that he had to face the very real possibility of that being the case. How were they supposed to get past that, he wondered. Sometimes he wasn't sure they could, and that's what frightened him the most.

Looking back on it, his liaison with Rikki hadn't been about love, it hadn't even been about sex. It had been about guilt, shame and a desperate need for forgiveness. He could tell Lindsay that, he supposed, but he cringed every time he thought about doing so. It sounded so damn cliché and trite – an archetypal 'it didn't mean anything' bull-shit refrain.

He'd changed, that was the plain fact of the matter. The man he was then wasn't the man he was now. When he'd realised the best thing that had ever happened to him was slipping through his fingers, he received a short sharp kick in the nether-regions, a guaranteed eye-opener on the person he wanted – or rather didn't - want to be.

Lindsay had given him a second chance that he probably hadn't deserved, but he sure as hell hadn't wasted it. He'd looked in the mirror one day, vowed things would be different, and had followed through with that declaration ever since. It had taken time, but he'd opened up, let her in, allowed himself to love in a way that he never had before. Maybe it was simply a matter of growing up, he didn't know, but he couldn't have envisaged himself as a husband and father back then. Now though – now he couldn't imagine being anything else.

And yet… he couldn't escape that nagging sense of culpability. Lindsay may have forgiven him for his mistakes, but he found it hard to forgive himself. It was for that reason that he'd allowed his mother to lay all the blame for their marital woes at his door. It was succumbing to martyrdom he knew, but he'd struggled to defend himself when he knew there was at least some grain of truth to her accusations.

He knew Lindsay probably felt a similar sense of responsibility about over-reacting to that night at Sullivan's the way she had, and he supposed that's what he needed to remember when the guilt threatened to engulf him. The blame was theirs – not solely his, or hers. They'd both made mistakes and they'd both paid for them. It wasn't about divvying up responsibility for the past; it was about starting afresh and successfully avoiding the pot-holes lying in wait to trip them up.

They could do it, he knew they could. They just had to trust and believe in their ability to do so…

**OOOOOO**

_**Several hours later…**_

"Seriously? The two of you are back together and you're not, like, getting any… _at all_?"

"Megan! Stop!"

Lindsay giggled at the other woman's incredulous expression. This was exactly why she was glad that Megan was her friend. At first glance, they didn't have much in common. Megan was a true 'Sex-and-the-City' girl whereas Lindsay was significantly more 'home-town honey' as her friend so delightfully liked to put it.

In fact, they probably wouldn't have become friends at all if Lindsay hasn't moved into the apartment next to Megan's when she'd finally escaped Uncle Freddy's couch a few weeks after her arrival in New York. A couple of hallway conversations had turned into coffee, followed by lunch and finally a night out on the town. Chalk and Cheese they may be, but they'd been fair-weather friends for going on eight years now.

They didn't meet up all that often, but it was an arrangement that suited them both. They each needed some contrast in their lives and their unconventional friendship provided that for them. They were both intelligent enough to realise that they would probably drive one another crazy if they spent too much time in each other's company so they'd never travelled down that route. In small doses, they complimented each other well and had chosen to stick to a formula that worked.

"Well, that's just too bad." Megan sighed dramatically, her eyes twinkling with mischief. "He's such a hottie, not to mention skilled in all the important areas too."

"Oh yeah?" Lindsay's eyebrows rose. "And how exactly do you know that?"

Megan grinned. "Paper-thin walls, honey, paper-thin walls…"

Lindsay blushed in spite of the fact that she was quite certain that Megan hadn't heard anything untoward… she hoped. Oh god, they hadn't been _that_ loud, had they?

"Cut it out!" she protested when Megan started laughing like a loon.

"Your face!" her friend hiccupped. "Priceless!"

"Shut up!" Lindsay said with a princess pout and a regal toss of her head, "Just because you're jealous. And besides," she added cheekily. "People in glass houses really shouldn't throw stones, you know."

They both laughed at that.

"You _are_ sure though?" Megan asked, her expression serious for once. "About Danny, I mean. About giving your marriage another chance?"

Lindsay nodded. "Yes, I'm sure," she replied. "It's not going to be easy fitting all the pieces back together, but it's definitely what I want."

"Well, you look better on it already," Megan told her. "I was getting seriously worried about you there for a while. Especially when you dropped off the radar the way you did."

"I'm sorry," Lindsay apologised. "I guess I just retreated into myself. It was all I could do to get out of bed most days. All I could think about was work and Lucy - I didn't have the energy for anything else. It wasn't anything personal, I swear."

"I never thought that," Megan assured her. "But listen… you do know you can talk to me, right? I know I'm the mad-cap 'fun' friend, but I like to think that there's more to us than that. You're my role-model for when I finally decide to grow up."

Lindsay laughed.

"I mean I'm happy being the single-girl-about-town _now_," Megan continued, "But in a few years time, I'm definitely going to be wanting more. And when I finally do have a family, someone's gotta show me how to change a diaper, don't they? I'm counting on you, girl. You've got this Mom thing all sewn up in my opinion. Lucy-Lu's just the best."

Lindsay smiled, blushing a little at the compliment. "Thanks. And you know what feels really good right now?" she went on.

"No – what?"

"The possibility that I might be able to do it all over again."

Megan regarded her quizzically. "You want another baby?"

Lindsay nodded. "After Lucy was born, I didn't think I would, but it's this yearning in me that refuses to go away. I'd pretty much given up hope of it ever happening again though. I mean I couldn't see myself wanting children with anyone but Danny…"

She broke off with a sigh. "Of course, it's way too soon for us to be contemplating another baby," she said. "We've got to find a way to put things back together first."

"You will." Megan said, reaching over to squeeze her hand in encouragement. "Have faith and it'll all come right in the end, I'm sure of it."

"I hope so," Lindsay replied.

"Well, I know so," Megan told her, and then stretched and wriggled her robe-clad shoulders. "Now, I don't know about you," she said, "But I'm definitely feeling the need for a full body massage. How about we go and sign up?"

**OOOOOO**

_**Meanwhile, on the other side of the city…**_

"Whatcha doin' out here?"

Danny looked up from where he was sitting on the back stoop at the sound of his cousin's voice. "Just taking a breather from all the mayhem," he replied.

"Sounds like a good idea," Antonio said, taking a seat beside him. He popped the tab on a can of beer and handed it over. "Here."

"Thanks," Danny said, taking the can from him and lifting it to his lips to take a swallow.

"So… Lindsay let you have Lucy for the day, huh?"

Danny flickered a glance in his cousin's direction. "Apparently."

"And is there a reason you didn't bring the lovely Rachel?" Antonio asked.

"I was avoiding the smoke that would've come out of my mother's ears if I had," Danny replied.

Antonio pursed his lips. "Well, those were politician's answers if ever I heard 'em," he remarked. "Wouldn't have anything to do with the big ol' secret, would it?"

"What big secret?"

"The one your cute-as-a-button daughter told me about."

Danny shook his head wryly. "I should have known."

"Oh, she didn't give the game away. She was just all excited about having a secret to keep and couldn't wait to tell me all about it."

"Just as long as she doesn't mention it to Ma."

"Why not?"

Danny looked at his cousin contemplatively. "You can keep your mouth shut, right?"

Antonio nodded. "Yes – although if it's particularly juicy, I'm probably going to tell Kirsten," he admitted candidly.

Danny paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. "It's me and Lindsay," he said. "We've decided to give things another shot. It's early days though so..."

"You don't want Aunt Rosa to know because she'd have you installed out in the suburbs with 2.4 children in the blink of an eye?"

Danny's lips curled up into a wry smile. "Something like that, yeah. It'd just be too much pressure and things are a minefield as it is."

"But you still love Lindsay, right?"

"Yes, god yes," Danny admitted fervently. "Rachel was great but…"

"She wasn't the woman you wanted when all was said and done?"

Danny nodded. "Why do you reckon that is?" he wondered out loud. "Why do you reckon one person fits and another doesn't when both of them are your kind of people?"

Antonio shrugged. "Chemistry?" he suggested. "I don't know. Maybe it's something as basic as friendship. I've been with other women whom I've genuinely loved, but I never wanted to commit to them in the same way that I did with Kirsten. She's my best friend. I asked her to marry me because I knew she'd be someone I could count on and have fun with on a daily basis - as well as someone who stirred me up in all the right ways."

Danny was silent as he absorbed that. "Makes sense," he eventually concluded.

"Okay so seeing as I'm privy to your little bombshell – can I let you in on one of mine?"

"I'm all ears," Danny said, his curiosity stirred.

"Kirsten's pregnant."

"Really? That's great, man!" Danny clapped his cousin on the back in congratulations. "How far along?"

"Just a few weeks. She wants to keep it quiet for now. It took us a long time to get pregnant and she doesn't want to tempt fate. I had to tell someone though or I was going to burst."

"So how do you feel about the prospect of becoming a father?"

"Petrified."

Danny laughed. "I know the feeling."

"Babies are just so damn small. If only they could pop out around Lucy's age, I'd be sweet."

"I'm not sure Kirsten'd be all that thrilled," Danny joked.

Antonio shuddered. "You know what's really freaking me out though? Having to watch her go through labour - you hear all kinds of horror stories."

"I'm not saying it's a walk in the park, far from it, but it all kind of gets blurred around the edges once the baby arrives," Danny told him.

"Word of warning though," he went on. "Inappropriate jokes in the middle of a contraction are definitely _not_ appreciated."

Antonio laughed. "I'll try to remember that."

"What are the two of you doing out here?" a sharp voice came from behind them then. They both started guiltily as if they'd been caught red-handed doing something they shouldn't.

"Just getting a breath of fresh air," Danny told his mother in a pacifying tone once he'd regained his composure.

"Well, it's nearly time to cut the cake so shift your lazy butts and get back inside. Danny – you can help me in the kitchen. Antonio – you go and organise everyone in the other room."

Reverting to the small boys they used to be rather than the thirty-something men they now were, they both followed the peremptory orders without question.

"Lucy's been waiting all day for this," Danny commented to his mother as he uncovered the cake and began to arrange the candles on top.

Rosa Messer beamed. "She loves her Nonna's cakes."

Danny grinned. "Especially the chocolate ones."

"You didn't bring _that _woman, I see."

Danny's face fell. He'd been hoping to avoid this. "Don't spoil it, Ma," he pleaded.

"I just wanted to know why," she said defensively.

"Well, it's not like you've ever made her feel very welcome, is it?" Danny responded in a harsh tone.

Rosa's expression became distinctly haughty. "Well, can you blame me? She's the reason my grand-daughter doesn't have a proper family."

Danny huffed out his breath in irritation. "Rachel wasn't responsible for Lindsay and my split," he said, disputing this theory.

"So it's just a coincidence that she moved to New York around the same time then?" his mother shot back.

Danny shook his head. "Talk about putting two-and-two together and making five," he remarked caustically. "Look - I hate to break it to you, Ma, but your math is seriously off. For your information, Rachel didn't transfer to New York until _after_ me and Lindsay broke up."

"She still turned your head when you could have been making things up to your wife," Rosa continued stubbornly.

In the past, Danny would have taken that, but he was tired of shouldering all the blame. "No, she didn't," he said with feeling. "I was devastated when Lindsay and I split. I didn't as much as look at another woman for months. When I was finally ready to move on, Rachel made me feel like I was worth something again. I don't regret being with her, I never will, but if it makes you feel any better, it's over between us. I liked her a lot, but it just wasn't right in the end."

There was silence and the tension in the air was palpable. When Danny eventually lifted his gaze to his mother's face, he was relieved to see a slight softening in her eyes.

"You haven't told me everything," she accused.

"No," Danny agreed, "But you were pretty quick to cast aspersions, weren't you? I made mistakes for sure, but Lindsay wasn't entirely blameless, you know. There was a whole lot more to our break-up than what appeared on the surface. I suppose I let you think it was all me, because at the time I felt like it was all me. I was so full of 'if only's that I couldn't see beyond that. I can now, and I'm not going to accept it anymore. We've all got to find our peace with what happened – you included."

Rosa sighed. "I wanted so much more for you," she told him sadly.

"I know," Danny said soothingly, "But you can't live my life for me, Mama. No-one can."

He was tempted to elaborate on recent events, but something held him back. It was important that his mother came to terms with the breakdown of his marriage, even if it was no longer strictly necessary for her to do so. He'd often thought that she believed he'd married Lindsay out of duty and felt it was about time that opinion changed. Okay so yes, the pregnancy had exacerbated the situation, but he wouldn't have married for anything but love and he needed his mother to know that.

By tacit agreement, they decided to let the thorny matter drop. Now wasn't the time for a lengthy heart-to-heart, what was important was that they'd made that first important step towards reconciliation. Even so, they were both grateful for the timely interruption when Lucy came bounding into the room a minute or so later.

"Is it time for the cake? Is it time for the cake?" she demanded excitedly as Rosa lit the last of the candles.

"Yes, but be careful," Danny admonished her, reaching out a hand to catch her arm to draw her away from the bobbing flames. "I don't want to explain to your Mom why we had to make a trip to the Emergency Room."

"I told Great Uncle Carlos that he had to make a wish," Lucy said, "But he said he got sixty wishes 'cus that's how many years he is. Does that mean I can have five wishes on my next birthday?"

"I think Great Uncle Carlos is bending the rules there a bit, sweetie," Rosa told her grand-daughter. "However, I think if you're a really good girl between now and then, your Mommy and Daddy might just let you have five wishes as a special treat."

"Can I Daddy?" Lucy enquired, gazing up at him with round, expectant eyes. "Can I really?"

"I'll have to discuss it with Mommy," he told her solemnly, "So we'll see, huh?"

"Okay, but you won't forget to ask her, will you?"

Danny laughed. "No, I won't forget," he promised, ruffling her hair affectionately. "Now go and tell everyone we're ready," he said, patting her lightly on the butt to send her on her way.

"She's completely brazen sometimes," he said to his Mom. "I don't know whether to be worried or proud."

Rosa laughed. "As long as you make sure you curb her enthusiasm when she oversteps the mark, she'll be fine," she assured him. "I mean you didn't turn out too badly, did you?"

"I thought I was the ultimate disappointment," Danny said, only half jokingly.

Rosa sighed. "Honey, I may not agree with some of the choices you've made in life, but I couldn't be more proud of others. You didn't travel the same road as your brother and I will be forever grateful for that."

"That wasn't all me though, Ma," he told her because he thought she needed to hear it. "Louie pushed me away, cut me out of his life. It hurt, but he did it because he didn't want me following his lead."

"Mmm," Rosa said, obviously not entirely convinced by the theory. She lifted the cake to change the deeply painful subject. "Okay, let's do this before Lucy explodes with excitement," she said.

Willing to play along for now, Danny followed in her wake as they went through into the living room to re-join the assembled Messer clan.

**OOOOOO**

"Wore her out, huh?" Lindsay remarked with a smile as she opened the door to admit her husband and daughter a few hours later. Lucy was fast asleep on her father's shoulder, her thumb firmly wedged in her mouth.

Danny grinned. "We Messer's are an exhausting lot," he quipped as he stepped over the threshold.

"Don't I know it," Lindsay teased with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. She leaned forward and kissed her daughter's brow. "This little one included, I might add."

"Where's Stella?" Danny asked after they'd tucked up Lucy in bed and returned to the apartment's main living space.

"Dinner at Mac's," Lindsay told him. "He's cooking."

"You know I've always had these visions of them sitting there playing scrabble or something," Danny mused.

Lindsay laughed. "Maybe he's got a secret pool table," she joked.

Danny winced, his face scrunching up in disgust. "Lindsay!" he moaned. "That is _so_ not an image I want in my head. It's like thinking about your parents doin' it."

"Well, here's me thinking that they'd just play pool," Lindsay said dryly. "You have a very fertile imagination, Mr Messer."

"Says Miss 'You pay up now or you come up with something better'," Danny retorted, poking her playfully in the ribs.

Lindsay giggled, squirming to get away from his attacking hands. "It was an entirely innocent suggestion," she objected. "You were the one who turned it into something else."

"I think your memory's a little faulty there, babe," Danny murmured, tugging her closer and nuzzling at her throat. "Mmm…" He breathed in deeply. "You smell good."

"I went to the spa," she said, arching her neck to encourage his explorations.

"So you're all polished and buffed?" Danny asked; his voice thick with desire as his mouth found the sensitive underside of her jaw.

"Every last inch of me," she whispered against his wandering lips.

"Jesus! You're killin' me here, Montana!" he protested with a low groan before finally capturing her mouth with his.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, Lindsay revelled in her womanly power as they exchanged a series of increasingly heated kisses. She wasn't quite sure how much longer they could hold out. It was a definite case of déjà vu. She'd made him wait when they'd first started dating because she wanted to be sure that she wouldn't find him gone in the morning. That and the fact that she was nervous about her relative charms in comparison to the other women he'd bedded.

Now she knew she possessed something that they hadn't - the ability to tie him up in knots with words alone. Danny's libido was cerebral as much as it was physical, and somehow she'd tapped into that. It was so tempting to just let it all go and give into the escalating need. _But_ they'd agreed to wait until they'd talked it over with the counsellor so – reluctantly - they drew apart.

"I should go," Danny said, blowing out his ragged breath between pursed lips.

Lindsay shook her head. "No stay," she said, placing a restraining hand on his forearm. "I made dinner. Just something light because I knew your Mom would have prepared enough food to feed the entire state… but I…" She raised her expressive brown eyes to his face. "I miss just hanging out with you at home, you know?"

Danny nodded. He missed that casual familiarity too.

"I'll keep my hands to myself," she promised solemnly when he hesitated.

Danny laughed as the bubble of tension within him burst. "Yeah, but I'm not so sure I can," he told her with a self-deprecating grin.

Lindsay smiled, taking that for the acquiescence it was. "So tell me about the party," she said, as they went through into the kitchen so that she could serve up the cold chicken salad she'd prepared earlier.

"Kirsten's pregnant," he informed her, leaning against the counter-top as she mixed up the olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing.

"Really?" Lindsay's face lit up in genuine delight. "That's great! I know how much she wanted a baby."

"Yeah," Danny said. "Just don't say anything because they don't want everyone to know yet. I think Kirsten's a bit nervous about going public until she's hit the twelve-week mark."

Lindsay nodded in understanding. "So how did things go with your Mom?" she asked.

"Good," Danny told her. "We talked. Things are better. We've a way to go but…"

"You're getting there?" Lindsay finished for him.

He nodded; his relief evident. "Yeah."

"Just like us, huh?" she said, ducking her gaze shyly and looking out at him from under her coyly-lowered eyelashes.

Danny smiled and then reached out to entwine his fingers with hers. "Yeah," he agreed with quiet conviction. He brought their joined hands to his lips and lightly kissed the backs of her fingers. "Just like us."

_**To be**__** continued…**_

_**Next time : **we take an emotional trip to the therapist's office... x_


	27. Twenty Questions

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes****: **Hi! Here is a new update for you all :-)

Before we go any further though, I would just like to say that - while this story does have some real life experience thrown in here and there – it is essentially a work of fiction. I am not a professional therapist nor do I claim to be. This is purely my take on the Danny/Lindsay relationship, the issues they face and how they might overcome them. The therapy sessions contained within this and forthcoming chapters are therefore wholly a result of my opinion and imagination.

Anyway, that said, please read on and enjoy…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 27 – Twenty Questions**_

_**5.00PM, the following day…**_

Her stomach roiling with nervous tension, Lindsay paced the sidewalk outside the high-rise building waiting for Danny to arrive. They'd agreed to meet ten minutes earlier, but thus far he'd failed to show.

Without warning, her cell phone rang, startling her out of her wits. "Danny?" she answered breathlessly on seeing his familiar face on the display.

"Hey babe!" His voice sounded a little muffled as if he was speaking to her through a vacuum. "Look, I'm running late. Traffic coming in from Brooklyn was nose-to-nose. I should be there in around ten minutes. Why don't you go on up and let Simone know I've been delayed?"

"On my own?" Lindsay asked, the question betraying her inner apprehension.

"Simone doesn't bite," Danny assured her, his voice sounding clearer as he moved into an area with a better signal.

"Easy for you to say, she likes you," Lindsay retorted, her anxiety making her defensive.

"And why shouldn't she like you?" Danny countered calmly.

"Because she's…" Lindsay faltered. "You must have told her about… well, you know."

Danny sighed. "I told her that my marriage had broken down and that I'd found it difficult to come to terms with," he said, "But I didn't paint you as the Wicked Witch of the West if that's what you're thinking."

"That doesn't stop her thinking it though, does it?" Lindsay shot back.

"Well, seeing as her profession is all about not judging a book by its cover, I would hope she's a little more open-minded than that," Danny argued.

"But…"

"Just talk to her, Linds," Danny cut in irritably before she could go any further. "It'll be fine."

Lindsay bit her lip at the exasperated tone of his voice. She knew her insecurities came across as a little whiny sometimes, and today was apparently one of those days. She supposed it didn't help that he was clearly work-stressed at the moment as well.

"All right," she reluctantly agreed. "I'll see you soon, yeah?"

"Sure." His tone softened. "Look, I'll be there in ten minutes – fifteen at most," he promised before he ended their call.

"Okay," Lindsay muttered under her breath after she'd stashed her phone back in her coat pocket. "So are you a scared mouse or a courageous lion?"

Somewhere between the two was the honest answer, but her self-motivating tactics at least gave her the impetus she needed to push open the glass doors to the Lobby and head for the building's security gate. Five minutes later, she entered a lushly carpeted waiting room on the twenty-fifth floor and approached the young, redheaded woman sitting at the desk. "Hi! I'm…"

"Lindsay right?" Another voice cut in before she could properly introduce herself.

Lindsay transferred her gaze to the dark-haired woman standing in the doorway of an office just beyond the reception desk. Simone's Native American ancestry was obvious from her caramel-toned skin and dark eyes. Her straight, jet-black hair was coiled in a loose bun at the nape of her neck and secured with a pair of decorative wooden hair-pins.

"Yes, I…"

Not really knowing what to say, Lindsay broke off and smiled nervously at the chicly-dressed psychologist in front of her.

"Come on through," Simone invited in a calm, smooth voice that was like liquid chocolate to the senses.

"Danny not with you?" she asked as Lindsay walked the short distance down the hallway towards her.

"No, I mean yes… he's just running a bit late. He had to travel back from a crime scene in Brooklyn and the traffic's gridlocked."

Simone nodded. "Karis," she said, looking back at her receptionist. "How about some herbal tea and some of those spiced cookies?"

The flame-haired woman nodded amenably. "I'll bring them through," she said.

"Thanks and send Danny straight in when he gets here, okay?" Simone instructed as she ushered Lindsay into her office.

"I'd've offered you coffee," she said as she shut the door behind them, "But caffeine's not so good when you're on edge."

Lindsay gnawed on her bottom lip. "Is it that obvious?" she asked.

"I'm trained to spot these things," Simone replied as she took Lindsay's coat and waved her towards the large, comfy-looking sofa nearby. She hung the garment up on a polished wooden coat-stand in the corner and then crossed to join her nervous guest.

"So tell me why you're looking at me like I'm about to attack you with a three-pronged pitch-fork?" she said, taking a seat alongside Lindsay on the couch rather than sitting in the strategically-placed armchair opposite.

Some of Lindsay's tension dissipated at that. "I'm sorry; it's just that therapy stirs up not-so-good memories for me, and Danny and me…" She sucked in a breath. "He's your friend."

"And?"

"And I hurt him badly."

Simone nodded, not denying that fact. "Yes, but I'm not here to judge. A friend asked for my help and I want to offer it in the best way I can. If I approached this with any pre-conceived notions of the person you are then I'd be failing in that regard, wouldn't I?"

"I guess," Lindsay concurred doubtfully.

"So relax, okay? I just want to get to know you a little. It's important that I understand the dynamics of yours and Danny's relationship so that I can recommend someone that's suitable for you both."

"But you've met Rachel," Lindsay blurted before she could stop herself.

Simone nodded. "Yes – and I liked her, I'm not going to deny that. But Danny chose you. He may be a doofus sometimes, but I don't think he's that bad a judge of character."

"The thing is I umm… have… well… issues."

Simone smiled. "Doesn't everybody?"

Lindsay relaxed a little more. "You're supposed to say 'let's talk about that'," she pointed out with no small trace of cynicism in her voice.

"Yeah well, I'm a really bad therapist," Simone responded dryly.

Lindsay's eyes widened in shocked surprise, and then she let loose with a bubble of laughter. "Okay so I guess I know why Danny likes you," she remarked.

"When he wouldn't normally go anywhere near a shrink even if his life depended on it, you mean?" Simone said.

Lindsay nodded. "Yeah. You… err… you met after September the 11th, I understand?" she enquired rather awkwardly.

Simone's expression sobered. "Yes – he wasn't exactly a model patient, I have to say."

Lindsay smiled knowingly. "I bet."

Simone shrugged. "Some people needed to talk, some didn't. Danny found a way to come to terms; he just didn't do it through therapy. He got involved in a lot of the victim support activities instead. We became friends through that really."

Lindsay nodded and then jumped at the sudden, sharp rap on the door.

"Come in," Simone called, and then smiled in greeting as the door was shouldered open and Danny stepped over the threshold, carrying a tray bearing their tea and cookies.

"Your tea, ma'am," he said in a really bad British accent as he set his burden down on the low coffee table in front of the couch. He wrinkled his nose. "It smells like cat's piss," he declared in his normal voice.

"Danny!" Lindsay scolded him, aghast at his rudeness.

"Pah! She already knows what I think of all that herbal crap," Danny said, waving off the censure. He popped one of the spiced cookies into his mouth. "These taste good though."

Simone rose to pour the tea, observing silently as Danny took her place on the sofa next to his wife and leaned over to kiss the disapproving expression off her face. While the underlying tension between the two of them was clearly apparent, she didn't think she'd ever seen that look of complete love on Danny's face before. The boy had it bad – and from the looks of things, the girl did too.

"So you're a CSI too?" she asked as she handed Lindsay a cup of the fragrantly-scented tea.

The pretty brunette nodded. "Yes."

"So that's how the two of you met then?"

"Uh-huh," Lindsay replied as she sipped at the hot liquid and allowed it to work its magic on her frazzled nerves.

"So…" Simone glanced enquiringly between the two of them. "What were your first impressions of each other?"

"Cute – if a little uptight," was Danny's verdict.

"Arrogant jerk," Lindsay claimed over the rim of her tea-cup.

"Hey!" The look Danny threw her was full of exaggerated hurt.

She smiled. "Arrogant *hot* jerk," she amended.

Danny took another cookie, and then leaned back against the sofa cushions, his chest puffing out with pride. "Now that's more like it," he declared.

Simone laughed. "I'm not sure I dare ask, but first date?"

"She stood me up."

Lindsay's light-hearted expression immediately faded. "It wasn't personal, I just…"

She broke off and gazed at him helplessly. He reached out and squeezed her hand. "I know," he assured her. "Don't worry about it."

Lindsay looked over at Simone. "Bad timing," she said. "My past came back to haunt me in the worst way possible and it kind of derailed me for a while."

Simone nodded in understanding, but chose not to pursue the subject any further. "Okay," she continued, "So how about…"

"Is this twenty questions or somethin'?" Danny interrupted before she could finish her sentence.

Simone grinned. "In a manner of speaking," she admitted. "People reveal more than they realise when they're forced to answer quick-fire questions in this way."

Danny's eyes narrowed. "You're psycho-analysing us," he accused.

"Isn't that what you asked me to do?" Simone responded airily, before regarding them both with a serious expression on her face. "I need to get a feel for how your relationship works if I'm going to recommend someone appropriate," she explained.

"And you're a nosey bitch," Danny pointed out good-naturedly.

"And I'm a nosey bitch," she concurred easily. "So – moving on then – first kiss?"

"A long time coming…" Danny was swift to answer.

"But worth the wait…" Lindsay finished with a warm twinkle in her eye.

"Gotta agree with that," Danny concurred with a broad grin.

Simone smiled. "Okay so what about the first time you…?"

"Did the deed?" Danny supplied with lifted eyebrows. He turned and winked cheekily at his unsuspecting wife. "A revelation."

Lindsay blushed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly as it sounds."

Her forehead wrinkled in consternation. "You thought I'd be a disappointment," she accused.

Danny shook his head in denial. "Nah Montana, don't be a sap. I'd known you for nearly two years by then, wanted you for the majority of that time. Trust me you were never going to be a disappointment. I guess I just thought you'd take a little more warming up."

Lindsay glanced at Simone. "Is it weird that I find that kind of insulting?" she asked.

Simone smiled. "No, but I think what he's not very eloquently trying to tell you is that you surprised him. I would say that was a good thing, wouldn't you?"

"Mmm," Lindsay mused unconvinced, and then felt a warm glow suffuse her from the inside out as she thought back over that first night together. "Well, it definitely scored a ten out of ten for me," she concluded.

"Right so… next question?" Danny interrupted, colour rising on his cheeks at this unexpectedly ringing endorsement.

Lindsay giggled at his discomfiture. "You're embarrassed."

"Am not," he retorted indignantly.

"Bull," she shot back.

"Very interesting," Simone cut in enigmatically.

"Why?" Danny asked, his gaze swinging from Lindsay's to hers.

She laughed. "I thought you didn't like me psycho-analysing you."

"I'm prepared to make an exception just this once," Danny told her.

Simone smiled. "It just shows a level of personal investment above the norm that's all. Quite a turnaround for you, I think."

Danny inclined his head in acceptance of that fact. "It was more than just sex for me if that's what you're getting at," he said.

Simone nodded. "All right so now for the biggie – the first time love came into the equation?"

The atmosphere in the room instantly changed. Whereas before they'd been relaxed and comfortable with each other, now the tension between the two of them was rife. Lindsay looked as if she was about to cry, and guilt had darkened Danny's eyes to an almost navy-blue.

"Just be honest," Simone encouraged gently as it became obvious that she'd hit a raw nerve. "It's the best way, however painful the words might be to say or hear."

Lindsay nodded. "I…" She sucked in a deep breath. "Not the way I wanted it to be," she admitted shakily.

"Danny?" Simone looked towards him for a response.

"Umm…" He coughed, awkwardly clearing his throat. "One helluva wake-up call," he admitted; his voice hoarse with a multitude of conflicting emotions.

"And not the way I wanted it to be either," he added, turning to Lindsay with deep and profound regret shining in his vivid blue eyes.

Lindsay bit her lip to hold back the threatening tears. "I know," she whispered, reaching out to curl her fingers around his. "I know."

"Take a moment," Simone advised, rising to clear away the cups and tea-tray. To give them some time alone, she returned the crockery to reception herself rather than buzzing her assistant to come in and collect it.

When she returned a few minutes later, Lindsay and Danny had managed to regain their lost composure. They were still holding hands, she was heartened to see. A good sign, she felt. It showed that they were still very much connected, despite the difficult and complex emotions that they were being forced to address.

"Okay," she said, going to her desk and pulling open the top left-hand drawer. "I think I've probably heard enough." She found what she wanted, and then came back around the desk towards them.

"So – what's the verdict?" Danny asked, shifting uncomfortably in his seat as he awaited her judgement.

"I think Samantha Whittaker will work for you," Simone said, handing over the business card. "I spoke to her earlier today and she's got some slots available. Give her office a call and set up an appointment."

"So we passed the test, huh?" Danny said.

"I wouldn't call it a test exactly," Simone refuted, "But if you want my opinion then yes, I do believe what you have together is worth fighting for. You obviously have some deep-rooted issues to sort out, but you clearly love and respect each other and that's a damn good place to start."

She sat back and folded her hands together in her lap. "If you want some free advice though – you've got to try to get past the fear of hurting one another again. It's only natural to feel that way, especially as I can see how badly you both want this to work. But to make the most of what therapy has to offer you, you have to lay it all out on the table – warts and all. It's going to be painful, it's probably going to make you angry at each other every once in a while, but you can't be afraid of that. A good marriage isn't about always getting on; it's about learning the right way to disagree and the best way to resolve those conflicts so that they don't de-stabilize the rock-bed of your relationship to the point where it begins to crack."

"We've already been at the point where it's cracked wide open," Lindsay said quietly. "Are we deluding ourselves in thinking that it can be different this time around?"

Simone shook her head. "No. Reading between the lines, I would say you got to that point because you didn't deal with the issues as they arose. By not shoring up the foundations of your marriage the way you should have done, they eventually collapsed underneath you and brought everything else crashing down with them. You can rebuild as long as you want it enough. And if you're prepared to put in the hard work to learn from your mistakes, there is no reason why you can't construct something infinitely stronger this time around. It's up to you really. You'll get out whatever you put into it in the end."

Lindsay nodded. "So is that it?" she asked with false animation, "Cus I really should get home – I told the babysitter an extra hour and a half max." She rose purposefully to her feet; a clear indication that she felt it was time for them to leave.

Unfortunately, Danny didn't share her opinion. "Lindsay," he chided meaningfully, his stretched-out legs blocking her escape route.

"What?" she asked.

"You know what," he returned implacably.

Caught between a rock and a hard place by her husband's persistence, Lindsay wrung her hands agitatedly as her nervous tension made an unwelcome return. "I'm not ready for this," she said, her tone edged with a touch of hysteria.

"Will you ever be?" he asked her.

"I can't just be fixed, Danny," she told him mulishly. "It doesn't work like that."

"Are you broken?" Simone calmly interjected.

"I…" Lindsay started and then faltered. "I'm not normal," she confessed, her gaze dropping to her feet as she reluctantly sat back down.

"Linds…" Danny shook his head in disbelief, but Simone held up her hand to silence his well-meaning protest.

"Why's that?" she asked Lindsay quietly.

The young CSI's eyes filled as her heart constricted painfully inside her chest. "Well, it's obvious he's told you why," she responded bitterly.

"He confided in me on the understanding that it didn't go any further," Simone explained, "And it'll remain that way unless you choose for it to be different," she vowed, "But that wasn't what I asked."

"I'm not like other women," Lindsay said.

"And that makes you abnormal, does it?"

"Yes, no, I don't know." She huffed out her breath, frustrated by her indecision. "It's been sixteen years; I should be over it by now," she stated.

"Why?"

"I don't know!" Lindsay said, throwing her hands up in exasperation. "I just should be." She scrabbled around in her purse and pulled out the small plastic bottle that contained her pills. "I shouldn't still be reliant on these!" she said, brandishing them wildly. She brought her hand to her face as the tears began to flow. "I hate being reliant on these," she sobbed. "I hate it! I hate it!"

His face stricken, Danny reached out to rub a comforting hand up-and-down her shaking back as the flood-gates opened. "Look, maybe this isn't the right time," he said to Simone.

"No, I think this is exactly the right time," his friend disagreed. She leaned forward and took one of Lindsay's hands in hers. "Lindsay – look at me," she urged.

After a brief struggle, Lindsay lifted her tear-drenched eyes to Simone's face. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Don't be, you're entitled to feel what you feel, but I think you need to work on changing that. All the therapy you've had up until now has been to help you to come terms with what happened to you, right?"

Wiping away her tears, Lindsay nodded mutely in response.

"Well, I'm not going to sugar-coat it for you – you're _never _going to get over it, not completely. It will always be part of your life in some shape or form. By setting yourself such an unrealistic goal, you've only compounded the sense of personal failure that you feel. You need to find a way to accept the impact it's had on your life and learn how to live with it. I can help you do that if you're willing to give me the chance."

Torn, Lindsay cast a doubtful glance in Danny's direction. Simone's words made a whole lot of sense to her, but she was still concerned about the ethics of the situation. "Is it right though?" she asked. "Danny's your friend and I'm..."

"Anything you tell me is strictly between us, Lindsay," Simone assured her. "I would never violate patient confidentiality in that way. I understand that some of what you tell me will be deeply personal and not necessarily something that you'd want to share. Whatever you confide in Danny will be your choice and yours alone. I can separate my friendship with him from my professional relationship with you. If I couldn't, I'd be recommending a referral rather than offering to take on your case. I still will if you'd be more comfortable with that?"

Lindsay shook her head. "No, I… I guess there's no harm in trying."

Simone smiled. "Good. Figure out what times work best for you and then call and schedule an appointment with Karis," she said.

Lindsay nodded. "Okay," she agreed tremulously. "Umm…" She looked down at her mascara-streaked fingers. "Is there somewhere I can clean up?" she asked.

Simone nodded. "The bathroom's just down the hall on the left," she directed.

"I don't want her keeping stuff from me," Danny burst out once Lindsay had left the room. "That's what got us into this mess in the first place."

"Full and honest disclosure isn't always the best way," Simone told him seriously. "It is between the two of you as a couple, but Lindsay's feelings of personal worth are her own affair. Don't get me wrong, I will be encouraging her to talk to you, but if I sat here and said I expected her to tell you absolutely everything then she's only going to hold things back. You can't be her knight in shining armour here, Danny. She has to do this for herself."

Danny sighed. "I knew she had bad self-esteem, but the 'not normal' stuff it's just…" he trailed off with a shake of his head.

"It's really not all that uncommon," Simone reassured him. "She feels what happened to her has set her apart somehow, made her different to everyone else. You said she's had a couple of previous relationships that have ended badly?"

"Yes."

"If she took that as a personal rejection rather than just one of those things, then that would have only added to the sense of isolation that she feels."

"The thing is she seems so together on the surface," Danny said. "I mean we have demanding jobs, an energetic four year old to care for, and she handles the pressures of that just fine."

"Probably because she believes in her abilities in those areas," Simone said. "I don't know her well enough yet to form an accurate opinion, but gut feel from what you've told me and what I've seen today is that her insecurities are very much focused on her relationships with men. I think she accepts that you love her; that you want her sexually, but I'm not sure she fully understands why. I think she just doesn't see herself as woman that men would want – especially a man like you."

"What does that mean?"

Simone smiled at his misplaced indignation. "Danny, you're very charming," she said. "Very confident in your sexuality. Maybe you've had a few commitment issues in the past, but that's not really what we're talking about here. It's much more basic than that. We're talking about male-female attraction on a purely primal level."

"She's not shy with me," Danny objected.

"I imagine because she's comfortable enough with you not to be. That doesn't mean she doesn't have doubts though. She just projects those insecurities into a different area of your relationship."

"I guess," Danny said thoughtfully.

"But that's all educated conjecture at the moment," Simone said. "Don't take it as anything more than that."

Danny sighed. "The truth is most of the time she's fine and it's easy to forget that she's ill. But then every-so-often – like just now, for instance – she's so completely down on herself it's unreal."

"That's the nature of depression, Danny," Simone told him. "Plus, she's an intelligent woman. I would think that – logically - she knows that what she's feeling is not strictly rational. When her daily life is happy and fulfilled, I expect she's able to combat the negative thoughts and focus on the more positive emotions instead. But if things get tough, she'll lose some of that perspective and her insecurities will take hold again."

"So how do I help her overcome that?"

"You can stand by her and support her as best you can, but, in the end, she has to do this herself. More importantly, she has to do this _for _herself and not just because she wants to please you. That's a recipe for disaster if ever there was one."

Danny frowned. "You think I'm pushing her too hard?" he asked worriedly.

"No, I think you're pushing her just enough, but you're going to have to watch the expectation. She's already set herself an impossible goal of 'getting over' what happened to her. It's not going to work if she simply exchanges it for another one of becoming the 'perfect' wife for you. Whether you like it or not, you can't go through what she's been through and come out of the other end of it unscathed. She'll probably always be troubled by moments of crippling self-doubt or bouts of depression, but it's not about eliminating those feelings. It's about learning how to manage them in a positive way so that they don't completely derail your lives when they occur."

Danny nodded. "Yeah, yeah, I get that."

"And you're prepared to take that on?"

"I love her, Simone. It's a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned. I know it's not going to be easy, but hey…" His lips quirked up into a self-deprecating smile, "…I'd get bored if it was all smooth-sailing."

"Which was why things didn't work out with Rachel, I take it?"

"You mean because it was all a little _too_ easy?" Danny asked, and then shrugged. "Yeah, I guess – that and the fact that I was still in love with my wife, of course."

Simone smiled. "So I see," she said, her tone full of playful meaning

Danny's lips curled up into a reluctant smile in response. "Lindsay changed me, I'll admit that," he said rather ruefully. "I didn't see it coming, but she made me reassess who I was, what I wanted out of life. And I wanted more – I wanted her. It's been a goddamn bumpy road, but I'm glad that I'm on it. If I'd done what I normally do and walked away after I'd completely messed up, I wouldn't have the life I have now. I'd probably still be cruising for some action every weekend and living a pretty meaningless existence as a result.

"I don't think you should give her all the credit for that," Simone said. "You made those changes because you were ready to make them. Lindsay was simply the catalysis for you to do so."

Danny nodded. "I didn't really know what love was until I met Lindsay though," he said and then wrinkled his nose in playful self-disgust. "I sound like a bad romance novel," he quipped dryly, and then shuddered exaggeratedly. "Scary."

Simone laughed. "True and honest emotion is good, but a sense of realism is also important. People often make the mistake of believing that it can all be chocolates-and-roses and then end up disappointed when they fail to achieve that."

"So going in with low expectations is the key, huh?" Danny said with a chuckle. "What a wonderfully romantic view on marriage you have."

Simone gave him a look that spoke volumes. "And now you're taking my words completely out of context," she reprimanded him.

He grinned at her, and then looked up as Lindsay re-entered the room and effectively ended their conversation.

"Hey!" he said, rising to his feet and moving towards her. "You ready to go?" he asked, touching her face gently. Her eyes were still a little swollen, but she'd mostly managed to repair the damage her tears had wrought.

Lindsay nodded. "Yeah," she said, and then looked beyond him to address Simone. "Thank you," she said with genuine gratitude.

Simone smiled. "No problem. You call and make that appointment, yeah?"

Lindsay nodded. "I will," she promised.

By unspoken agreement, Danny chose to escort Lindsay back to Stella's place rather than taking the divergent route to his own apartment. The trip mostly passed in silence. From the frequent glances Danny shot in his wife's direction, he could see that she was lost in thought, her brown eyes glassed over with a distinctively faraway look in them. When they were crushed together on the crowded subway car, he curled a steadying arm around her waist as he hung onto the hand-hold above his head and felt her arms come around him in instinctive response. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head, prompting her to lift her face to his.

"Okay?" he asked in a voice just above a whisper as he looked down into her eyes.

She shot him a watery smile. "Getting there," she assured him quietly, and then lay her cheek against his chest and let his solid presence calm her scattered senses. They didn't speak again until they were in the corridor outside Stella's apartment fifteen minutes later.

"Lindsay – wait!" Danny said, placing a restraining hand on her arm when she went to retrieve her keys from her purse.

"What?" She looked at him enquiringly, startled by the sudden urgency in his voice.

"I err… I just wanted to say that I was proud of you today," he told her. "I know that I forced the issue..."

"I needed you to," she acknowledged.

Danny inclined his head in response of that. "Maybe," he said, "But it can't have been easy and I think you did great."

Lindsay crumbled then as her emotions got the better of her, but she moved easily into his arms for a comforting hug. Rather than being disturbed by her breakdown therefore, he was strangely heartened by it instead. There were no barriers here, she was letting him in without hesitation and it felt like an important step. Wrapping his arms tightly around her, he rocked her gently, murmuring soothing nonsensical words in her ear as her tears ran their course.

Their private moment was interrupted a minute or so later when the door opened and Lucy's babysitter, Shelley stepped out into the corridor.

"Oh! Oh Geez! I'm sorry!" she hurriedly apologised when she realised her unintentional faux pas. "Is err… is everything ok?"

"Everything's fine," Danny assured her while Lindsay attempted to compose herself.

Shelley relaxed a little. "Umm… Stella's home. She said it'd be ok if I left…?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry; we're late, aren't we?" Lindsay cut in, glancing at her watch.

"It's no problem," Shelley said easily, brushing that off. "Lucy's bathed and in her pyjamas," she reported. "I think Stella was sorting out her bedtime drink. I had to put her in time-out earlier, but it was nothing serious – just over-excitement I think."

Lindsay nodded, wiping away the remnants of her tears with the tips of her fingers. "Okay thanks – I'll see you tomorrow around eight, yeah?"

"Sure," Shelley replied and then headed off down the corridor towards the elevators.

"Mommy! Daddy! You're home!" Lucy came running up to greet them as soon as they entered the apartment.

"Hey baby!" Lindsay said warmly, gathering the little girl up in her arms and cuddling her close. "You had a good day?"

"Yes!" Lucy proclaimed with enthusiasm before her expression turned contrite. "I had a time-out, but I said I was sowry," she admitted.

"Well, as long as you were," Lindsay said meaningfully.

"I was, Mommy, I promise!" Lucy told her earnestly.

"Then we'll say nothing more about it," Lindsay replied.

"Hi Daddy!" Lucy said, reaching over her mother's shoulder to kiss her father hello.

"Hey peanut!" he said, ruffling her hair as he dropped a kiss on her offered lips. "How ya doin'?"

"Cool!" she replied, making him laugh.

"Why you bin cryin' Mommy?" Lucy asked then, touching gentle fingers to her mother's blotchy cheeks.

"I just got something in my eye, sweetie," Lindsay said, only feeling slightly guilty about the little white lie. Her crying jag had been cathartic rather than a symptom of worsening depression so there was no need for her impressionable young daughter to know all the details.

Lucy took what she had been told at face value, but something must have clued her in that it wasn't the entire truth for she instinctively tightened her arms around her mother's neck when Stella joined them a few moments later. "Is it okay if Mommy reads my story, Auntie Stella?" she asked beguilingly.

"You can do it tomorrow night, I promise," she added as conciliation.

"Now there's an offer you can't refuse," Danny murmured under his breath, earning himself a censorious look from his female colleague in response.

"Of course that's okay, sweetie," Stella said, leaning in to lightly kiss Lucy's rosy cheek.

"An' can Daddy stay until it's time for me to go to sleep?" the little girl asked hopefully.

"Sure thing, princess," Danny agreed easily. "I'll come and kiss you goodnight once Mommy has tucked you in, all right?"

"'Kay," Lucy said as she lay her head down on her mother's shoulder and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

"Little kids are so cute and cuddly when they're all bathed and drowsy," Stella remarked fondly to Danny once Lindsay had taken Lucy through into the bedroom.

"Mmm," Danny responded absently as he sat down on the sofa and arched his neck to work out the crick in it. All of a sudden, he felt inexplicably drained.

"So how did it go?" Stella asked, sensing his mind was elsewhere.

"Okay," he said, his reply distinctly non-committal in tone. "It was pretty rough on Lindsay. Simone forced her to face up to some stuff and… well; she's agreed to therapy for herself in addition to the couple's counselling."

"Which is good, right?"

Danny nodded. "Yeah, yeah, it is," he said and then sighed heavily. "There's just a long way still to go and sometimes it seems like they'll never be an end to it," he lamented wearily.

"It's emotionally taxing on both of you," Stella said, sitting down beside him and placing a comforting hand between his shoulder-blades. "You shouldn't underestimate the effect on yourself. This isn't just about Lindsay, you know."

"She's the one carrying the greater load," Danny pointed out.

"Is she?" Stella shot back meaningfully. "I wouldn't necessarily say that."

When he turned to look at her, she lightly touched his face with her fingertips, and then curled her hand around the nape of his neck and drew him close. Accepting the offered comfort, Danny buried his face against her shoulder and tightened his arms around her waist, blinking back the unexpected tears that pricked at the back of his eyes.

"Just stay strong, kiddo, and it'll be worth it in the end," Stella soothed, sensing that he was close to edge of his endurance.

Danny wanted to believe that – he did believe that – but sometimes when the going got tough, his faith slipped a little. The session with Simone had taught him that this was just the start of it. His friend had been right. He and Lindsay couldn't be afraid of hurting each other, but it wasn't all that easy to open yourself up to emotional vulnerability in that way. He had the capacity to break Lindsay's heart again – and she his too. Could they be honest about the things that lay between them and still remain strong in the face of that? Or would they forever be torn apart by the painful consequences of their past mistakes?

The god's honest truth was that it was too close to call. They had to take it day-by-day, step-by-step, and hope and pray that they didn't trip up and fall flat on their faces in the process. They had love on their side at least, and a steadfast determination to make things work. The odds for their success were therefore favourable, but could still be upset by an unexpected ill-wind all the same.

It was a matter of faith, he supposed. They'd made it this far and that was a testament to the enduring strength of their emotional bond. If they took a step backwards at any point, they just had to make sure they counteracted it with two steps forward. Their progress would be slower, but they'd get to where they were going eventually and that was the main thing.

Pulling back from Stella, he drew in a steadying breath as he scrubbed his hands over his face. "Onwards and upwards, huh?" he said with a rather wan smile when he'd finally gotten his wayward emotions back under control.

Her eyes full of empathy, Stella reached out and took his hand in hers, squeezing his fingers reassuringly. "Onwards and upwards," she confirmed. "Just promise me you'll hang on in there, okay?"

Danny nodded. "I will," he assured her, his voice stronger now. "It's just hard sometimes that's all."

"Nothing worthwhile is ever easy," Stella told him and then sat back; satisfied that she'd suitably bolstered his flagging emotional confidence. "Now why don't you go and kiss that gorgeous little girl of yours goodnight?" she suggested.

Danny smiled. "Don't mind if I do," he said, and then went to do exactly that…

_**To be**__** continued…**_


	28. All or Nothing

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes****: **Hi! New chapter for you. Sorry about the delay in updating. I wrote about half of this part, and then hit a major brick-wall with it :-(

Anyway, I eventually managed to batter my way through it, thankfully getting inspired after much gnashing of teeth! Hope this is worth the wait, please let me know what you think…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 28 – All or Nothing**_

So Mac didn't have to do them yet another favour in addition to all the other special consideration he was giving them at the moment, Danny and Lindsay decided to schedule their couple's counselling sessions on the same afternoon that they'd already arranged with him to be work-free.

It gave them just enough time to grab a quick lunch together before their appointment at 2 o'clock. Afterwards, they would have the rest of the afternoon together before they had to relieve their nanny from her duties at six. All in all it was a sensible arrangement, but Lindsay couldn't help feeling sick to the stomach as the end of her shift approached on the day of their first appointment a week or so later.

She honestly thought that she might actually be physically ill from all the stress. With so much riding on the success or failure of today's therapy session, she couldn't prevent her expectations from building to fever-pitch as a result. Of course then she found herself succumbing to the debilitating nerves those expectations inevitably brought with them. It didn't help that her first appointment with Simone was in two days time either. She wasn't quite sure how she was going to handle having her emotions hung out to dry two times a week. She'd probably need the other five days to recover from the psychological mauling if the way she was feeling at the moment was anything to go by.

Oh God! Now she really _was_ going to throw up. Clapping her hand over her mouth, she rushed to the bathroom, only just making it in time before she lost what remained of her breakfast in the most undignified manner possible. Swallowing back the dry, painful heaves, she forced herself upright on shaky legs and took several slow, measured breaths as she willed her rebelling stomach to settle down again. A minute or so later, she exited the cubicle and crossed to the wash-basins to splash cool water on her clammy face and rinse out the nasty taste in her mouth.

A light rap of knuckles on the door disturbed her ablutions and Danny's concerned voice came to her through the panelled wood. "Linds – you okay in there, sweetheart?" he enquired solicitously.

Lindsay swilled her mouth out for one final time, and then pushed away from the sink and went to join him in the locker-room. "I'm fine," she said, going to her locker to retrieve the pack of breath-mints that she always carried in her purse.

"Don't lie to me, Lindsay, I heard you throwing up!" Danny said in an exasperated tone as he followed closely on her heels.

Lindsay sighed as she felt the warmth of his body-heat spread across her back, effectively blocking her escape route. Clearly, he wasn't going to let this one go in a hurry. Popping one of the chalky white sweets into her mouth, she paused for a moment to gather her thoughts, and then turned to face him.

"Haven't we been here before?" she asked lightly, unintentionally voicing her thoughts as she experienced a peculiar sense of déjà vu.

Danny stared at her confused for a moment, until his brain kicked in and he realised what she meant. "B-but you can't be!" he protested, his eyes wide and panic-stricken. "I-I used something!" He shook his head in stunned disbelief. "Jesus! It was only one night."

Unable to contain herself, Lindsay dissolved into highly inappropriate giggles at his wild-eyed alarm. "Contraception wasn't much of a barrier against the determination of Lucy, was it?" she remarked laughingly, and then reached out and patted him reassuringly on the cheek.

"Relax," she soothed, her fingers rasping pleasantly against the stubble on his face. "I'm not pregnant. I was just commenting on the similarities between then and now that's all."

"Jesus Montana! Give a guy a heart-attack, why don't you?" Danny exclaimed, bringing a palm to his thudding heart before he belatedly realised how his reaction might have been construed.

"Look, I mean, don't get me wrong," he went on quickly, seeking to remedy any misunderstanding caused. "Another baby'd be nice at some point, but right now? The timing couldn't be worse."

"It wasn't so great last time either," Lindsay felt the need to point out.

"All the more reason for us to get it right next time around then," Danny replied.

Lindsay felt a warm, pleasant glow ignite in the pit of her stomach at that. "So there's going to be a next time?" she asked, lowering her gaze shyly as she waited on tenterhooks for his answer.

"Yeah," Danny said, his expression softening into a distinctly goofy grin. "Well - as long as it's what you want too, of course."

Lindsay's answering smile spread like the sunrise across her face. "It is," she assured him. "More than I thought possible in fact."

There was a short silence as Danny studied her thoughtfully, a slight frown creasing his forehead. "Are you still on the pill?" he enquired bluntly a moment or two later.

"Umm no," Lindsay stuttered in response, momentarily taken aback by his abrupt - and exceedingly personal - query. Should they really be discussing their contraceptive regime when they could be interrupted by one of their colleagues at any moment? "There didn't seem much point after…" She broke off and shrugged her shoulders rather sorrowfully.

Danny nodded gravely. "You should probably make an appointment with your OB-GYN then," he decided solemnly.

Lindsay couldn't help but smile at that. He sounded so earnest about it all. "I'll do that," she replied, having to forcibly tamp down the bubble of laughter that threatened to break free.

Danny crossed his eyes at her obvious amusement. "Don't laugh!" he bemoaned. "I'm being serious. I seem to have super sperm where you're concerned for some reason."

Lindsay did laugh then. "Danny," she told him matter-of-factly. "Since we aren't actually having sex at the moment, the probability of you fertilising another little Messer is a big fat zero right now."

Danny however, waved her perfectly logical reasoning aside. "Yes," he agreed, "But it's not going to stay that way, is it? And there's always the possibility of us getting carried away in the heat of the moment too," he added.

"Don't have much faith in your own will-power, do you babe?" Lindsay commented wryly, her brown eyes sparkling with undisguised mirth.

In answer, Danny reached out and grasped her firmly by the hips. "It's not my fault you're so damn hot," he complained as he backed her up against the wall of lockers, the wicked intent in his blue eyes causing a shiver of anticipation to run down her spine.

"Danny…" Lindsay's hands rose to clutch at his biceps as he dipped his head to nuzzle at her neck, his lips warm and wet against her tingling skin. "Someone might see!"

"So?" he murmured unconcernedly, before grudgingly heeding her half-hearted protest and drawing back so that he could look down into her upturned face. He was relieved to discover that she had regained some her lost colour in the intervening minutes, but still felt the need to double-check that she was okay even so.

"You sure you're all right?" he asked, tenderly stroking her hair back from her face and tucking it behind her ears.

Lindsay nodded. "Yeah, I feel much better now. I suppose I got myself a bit worked up about this afternoon," she admitted shamefacedly, her gaze sliding away from his in embarrassed mortification.

"I would tell you that there's nothing to worry about," Danny said, leaning forward to press a delicate kiss to her forehead, "But I don't think it's quite that simple, do you?"

Lindsay gnawed at her bottom lip. "It's the fear of the unknown that's getting to me more than anything, I think," she explained. "I just don't know what to expect."

Danny nodded. "That's understandable," he said, "But if Simone says her therapist friend is on the level, then I, for one, am prepared to give it a shot. If it isn't for us then we'll reconsider, but we've gotta at least try to make it work."

"I know, I wasn't suggesting otherwise," Lindsay said. "It just feels like this is our last chance to get it right, and I can't bear the thought of anything happening to ruin that."

Danny rested his forehead against hers. "Me either," he told her, "But we've played the avoidance game for far too long now, babe. It's way past time we moved things onto the next level."

Lindsay sighed. "So it's all or nothing? Is that what you're saying?" she asked.

"Pretty much," Danny replied as he drew back from her a fraction. "We've either got to move forward as a couple, or make the final break from one another. My fingers are crossed for the former, but if it turns out to be the latter then at least we won't be living in some kind of limbo land like we have been doing this past year."

"I wouldn't exactly call it limbo-land, Danny," Lindsay responded in an acid tone. "We were on the brink of divorce. It felt pretty damn final to me."

"Legally perhaps," her husband acknowledged with an incline of his head. "But emotionally?" He shot her a meaningful look. "I think we were both a long way from accepting it was over, don't you?"

"You didn't seem to be having too much trouble moving on," Lindsay remarked cuttingly, the biting words out before she could question the wisdom of voicing them under such circumstances.

Danny flinched a little at the barbed comment, but decided to let it pass, not wanting to stir things up before their imminent therapy session. "That was just smoke and mirrors, Lindsay," he told her sombrely. "However much I tried to convince myself that I was over it, there wasn't a day that went by when I didn't think 'what if?' It was just my way of handling things, I suppose. Being alone nearly killed me. Having Rachel's companionship – well, it gave me the necessary strength to keep going when it felt like my whole life had gone to hell."

Lindsay was silent, her gaze fixed firmly on her feet. Try as she might to ignore it, there remained a twisted knot of resentment lodged in the pit of her stomach over Danny's relationship with Rachel. It was so typical of him to use another person as an emotional crutch when the going got tough. Hadn't the same thing happened with Rikki Sandoval six years ago, for instance?

And another thing - why wasn't it ever her who he turned to in his hour of need? Why was it always someone else? Worse still, why was it always some other woman? It made her feel so inadequate and more than a little bitter. She knew that airing that grievance right now was counter-productive however. That's why they were going for counselling, wasn't it? So that they could deal with the difficult issues in a positive way, and not get dragged into an endless cycle of pointless recriminations and unproductive antagonism towards each other.

She heaved out a long-suffering sigh. "I've got to get back to work," she said, her tone brisk and unemotional. "I need to finish analysing the trace I was working on before we leave today, or Mac's not going to be very impressed with me."

"All right," Danny said, running a hand down her arm and squeezing her fingers before he moved aside to let her pass. "Just try not to worry so much, okay?"

Lindsay didn't trust herself to answer that. Given their current situation, how could she not worry? It was as Danny had said earlier – it was all or nothing for them now, and she was so frightened that it would be nothing that she'd end up with, when what her bruised and fragile heart craved above all else was simply for them to be happy and in love again…

**OOOOOO**

"This is killing them, you know," Stella observed quietly to Hawkes as they watched Danny and Lindsay leave the Lab together an hour or so later.

The space between the semi-estranged couple as they entered the waiting elevator may have only been about thirty centimetres or so, but it may as well have been a five hundred metre chasm as far as Stella was concerned. The strain was beginning to tell on both of them, and in all honesty, it had her more than a little worried for their future.

"The first step is always the hardest, Stella," Sheldon told her in his soothing, matter-of-fact way.

"I don't think she could have slept more than a couple of hours last night," Stella continued fretfully. "Her light was still on when I got home after my late shift, and I could have sworn I heard her pacing about the apartment later on too. Not to mention the fact that Lucy's usually up around six-thirty on a good day."

"She's nervous, that's understandable," Sheldon said calmly. "It won't seem quite such a daunting prospect after today, I'm sure."

"She's got her individual therapy session on Thursday as well," Stella reminded him. "To tell you the truth, Sheldon, I'm seriously concerned about how she's going to hold up. She's not eating properly again, and I've seen her lose her temper with Lucy a couple of times recently. Not seriously, but it's telling to her state of mind all the same. She normally deals with Lucy's tantrums in such a calm and rational manner."

"Everybody has their off-days, Stella," Hawkes reasoned. "But if the situation persists, you should talk to Danny about getting her to see her doctor again. Her therapist should pick up on anything out of the ordinary in her behaviour though, so I shouldn't worry too much about it. Lindsay has a lot of people looking out for her. She'll be fine."

"Nobody noticed how bad things had gotten for her before though, did they?" Stella persisted.

"That's because we didn't know she was prone to depression before," Sheldon answered. "We all knew she was having a rough time of it, but we just thought it was down to the pressure of the divorce and that she'd eventually battle her way out of it. Now we know differently so we're going to be more aware of the signs. The leaflets I gave Danny will advise him what to look for, and he's the best-placed of any of us to decide when it's time to be concerned. He'll soon learn the difference between everyday low spirits and the onset of depression."

"That's if they stay together," Stella said, her tone full of uncharacteristic foreboding.

Sheldon raised his eyebrows at this atypical pessimism. "Do you honestly think that they're on that shaky ground?" he asked.

"No, no," Stella reassured him with a shake of her head. "It's just that they seemed so happy when they came back from Montana, but everything suddenly seems to have become a lot more tense between them in this last week. They've certainly not seen each other as much."

"Danny's been pretty busy with the 'See No Evil' case," Hawkes pointed out, referring to the high-profile serial murder hunt that was currently the NYPD's top priority case. "He's barely had time to breathe in between shifts, let alone anything else."

The press had termed their perp the 'See No Evil' killer due to his M.O. of blinding-folding his victims shortly before death. It had started with the crime scene that Mac and Danny had processed in Brooklyn a week ago, and two more victims had been discovered since then. There was a lot of pressure from the Mayor's office to catch the killer ASAP, so it was telling of Mac's enduring support for his married CSI's that he had still allowed Danny the afternoon off so that he could attend his and Lindsay's pre-arranged therapy session.

"So, in other words, I should stop reading too much into things?" Stella said.

Hawkes smiled at her mercifully lighter tone. "They'll get through it, Stell'" he said, placing a comforting hand against her back. "They love each other too much to let go of their marriage without one hell of a fight, and you know how stubborn they both can be when the chips are down…"

"One thing the two of them have definitely got in common," Stella agreed with a half-smile.

"Precisely – so relax, okay? You're like a regular mother hen around them at the moment."

"I just want my chicks to be safe and happy," Stella said, running her fingers through her cascade of dark brown curls.

"I know you do, but they flew the coop a long time ago now. It's time for them to make their own way in life."

Stella tucked her arm through his. "Tell me - why is it that you always manage to make me feel better about things?" she asked him.

"It's my superior bedside manner," Hawkes replied with a wide, sunny grin.

"Ahh," Stella said with knowing nod. "Once a doc always a doc, huh?"

"For my sins," he concurred rather ruefully.

"And to everyone else's infinite advantage," Stella returned with a warm, affectionate smile and a squeeze of his arm.

"Get outta here!" Sheldon protested, squirming uncomfortably.

Stella laughed at his embarrassed discomfiture, and then sobered as she noticed Mac's hurried approach. Something about the urgency of her colleague's stride told her that the news wasn't good.

"We've got another body," he said as he joined them, confirming her fears.

"Same M.O.?" she enquired, her mind immediately back on the job.

"First reports from the scene seem to suggest it," Mac answered, his expression grave and his eyes bleak. "I know you're supposed to be working the Maclousky case with Sheldon," he continued, "But you're the only senior CSI available to run point on this. I need to follow up on some of the evidence we got from the last crime scene and it can't wait. I don't want the trail to go cold – it's about the only solid lead we've got at the moment."

He frowned. "I could call Danny back in, I suppose…" he said, his reluctance to do so more than obvious to his two companions.

"It's fine," Stella cut in quickly. "Hawkes can manage on his own for the afternoon, can't you?" she said, glancing over at her colleague who immediately nodded his assent.

"I'll bring Danny up to speed with events tomorrow," she said, reaching out to place a calming hand on Mac's forearm. "Look - I know catching this bastard's important, but Danny and Lindsay's future happiness has got to take precedence over that. It's only a few hours – we're all prepared to work extra time to cover them if necessary."

Mac nodded. "I know," he said. "And I'm sure they appreciate it," he added before returning to the business at hand. "Take Adam with you," he instructed shortly. "And call me if you find anything significant."

"I will," Stella assured him. "Let's hope that Lady Luck is on our side for once, huh?"

"We can but hope, I guess," Mac replied in an uncharacteristically despondent tone. "It's about time we caught a break with this case. At the moment, it seems like we're on the highway to nowhereville…"

**OOOOOO**

_**Downtown Manhattan, an hour**__** or so later…**_

"Are you okay?" Lindsay asked Danny as they sat side-by-side on a sofa in the reception area waiting to be called through for their appointment.

He'd been unusually subdued throughout lunch, forcing her to carry most of the conversation and also prompting the occasional lapse into awkward silence with his monosyllabic responses to her increasingly vain attempts at small talk.

Resting his elbows on his knees, Danny set his brow against the tips of his fingers and heaved out a huge sigh. "I'm sorry," he apologised, his voice low so that their conversation wouldn't be overheard. "I've just got a lot on my mind at the moment. This case is pretty rough-going, and it's getting harder and harder to switch off at the end of the day."

Not without justifiable reason, Lindsay felt her temper begin to rise at his candid explanation for his current unresponsiveness. What did he have to go and call the Lab for anyway? If he'd left it alone like he should have done, he wouldn't have known about the fourth victim and his mind would be where it was supposed to be – here with her trying to save their marriage, instead of itching to be elsewhere with a goddamn dead body!

"This is important, Danny," she chastised him, attempting to keep her voice calm even though irritation was simmering just below the surface.

"You think I don't know that?" he snapped at her tetchily.

"I think you need to get your priorities straight," she retorted sharply. "It was you who decreed this as all-or-nothing territory for us, remember? If work's more important to you than our relationship, then what the hell are we doing here?"

"That's not the way it is, Lindsay, and you know it!" Danny said, gritting his teeth to hold back a more hot-tempered retort. Having an all-out row in the waiting room wasn't the way to demonstrate their commitment to the counselling process, now was it?

"Well, you've got a funny way of showing it," Lindsay shot back, the tremor in her voice revealing how close to the edge she was.

"All right, I'm sorry!" Danny hissed in frustration, and then cursed under his breath at the glitter of tears that he could see in her eyes when she shot a pain-filled glance his way.

"Don't," he said, his temper deflating at her obvious distress.

"_You_ wanted this," she said shakily. "It was _your _idea."

"I know, I know and I'm sorry. I just got distracted for a moment." He lifted a remorseful hand to her face and rubbed a gentle thumb back-and-forth over her cheek in a light, soothing gesture. "This is important to me, Lindsay," he assured her. "The most important thing in the world, I swear."

"So why is it so difficult for you to forget about everything else and focus on us for a few hours then?" she lamented. "I mean you're planning to go running back to the Lab once this is over, aren't you?" she accused.

Danny sighed. He had been intending to do that, true, but she was right, this was the time that they'd promised each other to work on their relationship. If they were already allowing other things to erode into that, what hope did they have of making it work?

"No," he said with a decisive shake of his head. "No, I'm not going to do that." He leaned forward and kissed her gently. "It can wait until tomorrow. The rest of the day? It's about you and me, and you and me only, okay?"

"You really mean that?" Lindsay asked, not entirely convinced by his earnest assurances.

Danny nodded. "Yes, I really mean that," he promised before his lips quirked up into a self-deprecating smile. "Just keep on giving me a well-deserved kick up the butt if I allow myself to get side-tracked, all right?"

Lindsay breathed a heady sigh of relief as the tension between them thankfully began to dissipate. "Count on it, cowboy," she told him with a slight smile, finally accepting his contrition as the genuine article.

"Danny and Lindsay Messer?" the receptionist announced then, smiling reassuringly at the anxious couple when they both looked towards her with no small amount of trepidation in their eyes. "You can go on through now," she informed them.

Nodding his thanks, Danny stood and held out his hand to his apprehensive wife. "Shall we?" he asked, his voice sounding stronger than he felt inside.

Steeling her nerves, Lindsay slipped her fingers into his and rose to her feet, grateful that they were now back on the same page insofar as to how they wanted this therapy session to turn out.

"So," Doctor Samantha Whittaker said ten minutes later, after she'd introduced herself and asked them a few general questions about their relationship to break the ice. "Why are we here?"

Stumped by the question, both Danny and Lindsay looked at her blankly before the latter finally managed to formulate some sort of response. "Because we love each other, and because neither of us wants to give up on our marriage," she answered.

Samantha nodded. "Well, that's reason enough," she remarked, "But why do you need me?"

"I guess because we're at a loss on how best to go about making things right between us," Danny answered this time. "It's not enough to just want it, is it? You have to make it happen. Admitting that things had gotten so bad that our relationship couldn't survive without professional help was hard for us, but if that's what it's going to take to save our marriage then we're both prepared to make the effort – right babe?" He looked towards Lindsay for confirmation and she nodded her agreement.

"Well – that's a good start," Samantha said, sitting back in her chair and folding her hands loosely together in her lap. "That you've made the decision to come for counselling together, I mean. So often in these situations, I find that one partner is more committed to the process than the other and that invariably hampers progress."

Danny nodded. "So how do we go about this?" he asked.

"That's for you to decide," the blonde therapist replied. "This is your marriage; it's up to you to take ownership of it. I'm here to guide you through the process, suggest things along the way, but ultimately what we cover in these sessions is your decision. I can't hope to understand everything about the two of you in an hour a week. You're the experts on the matter. I assume you must have some idea of the reasons for the breakdown of your relationship?"

Danny exchanged a significant look with Lindsay. "Well yeah," he said slowly, "Although knowing what's wrong and resolving it are two different things."

Samantha nodded. "Nobody said this was going to be easy," she told them. "I think what we need to establish first is some sort of game plan – a list of issues that you want to address. What I need from you both above all else is for you to be as honest as you possibly can however. I know that's easier said than done, but better outside than in, as my grandmother would say."

Danny nodded. "Makes sense."

"And are you on board with that too?" Samantha asked of a notably silent Lindsay.

The other woman nodded. "Yes, but if I'm honest I'm really nervous about how this will affect us. Things are so much better now than they were a few months ago, and I'm afraid that therapy'll cause us backslide if we're not careful."

"Well, I'm not going to lie to you, sometimes counselling does end up with a couple realising that the best thing for them would be to split," Samantha told her gently. "Some find that a relief in itself, however. Yes, it's sad and painful for all concerned, but when it's a conscious choice rather than an instinctive reaction, it makes it so much easier to come to terms with."

"Having said that though," she went on encouragingly. "The goal here is for a positive outcome, so let's think about working constructively towards that rather than worrying about things that might never happen."

Turning in her seat, she retrieved two pads of paper and two pens from the desk behind her and handed them over. "The idea is to establish an open and frank dialogue between the two of you," she explained. "Many couples find it easier to put pen to paper in the first instance however. Why don't you both write down what you feel are the top five issues you need to address and we'll go from there? No essays – just a few words of explanation. Try not to think too much about it either; the first thing that comes to mind is usually what's most important. Our mind is a clever beast, it has a habit of suppressing the most painful issues as a coping mechanism, but it's also a creature of instinct. Go with its initial response and you'll not go far wrong."

It was probably the hardest thing that she'd ever had to do, but Lindsay forced herself to be brutally honest when constructing her list. It ended up as a mixture of her own neuroses and some of her - as yet unspoken - resentments towards Danny personally. She supposed it was an appropriate balance, but it also had the potential to break both their hearts, which immediately made her want to screw it up and come up with something considerably more palatable. Samantha – somewhat perceptibly perhaps – held out her hand just as her pen was poised to strike through the most objectionable items however, and she reluctantly handed it over, her heart thumping like a drumbeat inside her chest.

"Well, there are several items in common, which is good," Samantha observed after she'd studied both lists. "It shows that you're generally in tune with regard to the problems that you face which helps." She handed Lindsay's list back. "How about you read yours out?" she suggested.

Caught on the hop, Lindsay baulked at that. "Why me?" she asked plaintively.

"Because you seem to be the one least in control here," Samantha told her honestly. "And I believe the exercise will give you back some of that control."

She turned her attention to Danny then. "I need you to listen and not comment for the moment," she instructed. "You'll have your say, but there's a time and a place for it, okay?"

"Okay," Danny agreed, his voice scratchy with nervous tension.

"So, how about we start at the top and work down?" Samantha said, looking at Lindsay expectantly.

"I err… umm…," Lindsay stuttered uncertainly, and then forcibly steadied her voice to communicate the first item on her list. "Number one – Rikki Sandoval and Rachel Havers," she read.

"You've grouped the two into one issue," Samantha remarked incisively. "Is that how you see it?"

"I err… I'm not sure," Lindsay said in confusion. "Why do you ask?"

"Because Danny has Rikki Sandoval on his list, but the other name isn't mentioned."

"Probably because he probably doesn't see Rachel as an issue," Lindsay surmised.

"But you do?" Samantha pressed.

Lindsay shrugged. "I have questions," she admitted. "It's not the same, but it kind of is in a way." She broke off with a nervous laugh. "I'm not making any sense, am I?"

"You're expressing how you feel, that's all that matters," Samantha said. "You can worry about making sense another time. This is about getting everything out in the open. There'll be time enough to analyse specific issues in more detail later."

"So," she continued after a brief pause. "Shall we move on?"

Lindsay nodded and read the next item on her list. "Number two: better communication."

"In what sense?" Samantha asked.

"We're not great at talking to each other unless we absolutely have to," Lindsay explained. "We've gotten better at it recently, but I think we both still hold back a lot. We prefer to avoid issues rather than confront them."

"And you believe you're both equally guilty of behaving in that way?" Samantha enquired.

"Yes." Lindsay nodded, keeping her gaze firmly trained on the other woman's. She wasn't sure she could continue with this if she was forced to look Danny in the eye right now.

"You'll be glad to know that your husband agrees with that assessment," Samantha told her. She lifted the pad in her hand. "I would say 'Learn to talk rather than suppress' describes what you've just explained rather aptly, don't you think?"

Lindsay nodded. "So umm… Number three…" she hurried on, desperate to get it over with now that she'd begun. "The adverse effects of my depression."

Samantha nodded. "I can see how you would think that's an issue, but, interestingly, that doesn't figure anywhere on Danny's list," she revealed.

"It doesn't?" Lindsay asked, her eyes widening in astonishment.

"That surprises you?" Samantha asked her.

"Well yeah," Lindsay replied. "I mean it's a big deal and… Why?" she demanded of Danny. "I don't understand."

"You can answer that," Samantha told him when he shot her a questioning look, clearly asking for permission to speak.

"I'm not saying it's a non-issue," Danny said, "It just doesn't rate in my top five that's all."

"Okay, so Lindsay, answer me one thing and try to be as honest as you can," Samantha said. "Did you mean the effects of your depression on your relationship, yourself or Danny personally?"

"The first and last, I guess," Lindsay answered after a momentary pause for thought. "Mainly the last if I'm honest. Other men in my life haven't been quite so accepting of it, you see."

"Which brings us neatly to one of Danny's issues so we may as well raise it now," Samantha said. "Do you want to explain to her what you've written down as number four?" she enquired of Danny.

"Sure," he agreed, and then immediately discovered it wasn't as easy as he thought. He cleared his throat in an attempt to force the words past the frog that had taken up unwanted residence there. "For umm… for Lindsay to see me as me, rather than view me through the shadows of her past relationships," he said.

Samantha nodded. "You feel she judges you as a collective rather than individually?" she asked.

"Yeah – I mean, I know I've done things that have hurt her badly, but I'm not prepared to be punished for other men's mistakes as well - or to be judged by their standards either."

"All right so that's another thing for us to explore then," Samantha said. "Now Lindsay - can you explain a little more about what the last two items on your list mean please?

Lindsay nodded before continuing. "I guess by 'why me?' I mean that I need to know why he loves me, what he sees in me, what drives him to stay with me. Sometimes I feel as if I don't measure up and I umm…" She stalled unable to put what she felt into words. "This is so hard to explain."

"It sounds as if you don't trust in his love," Samantha observed astutely.

Lindsay nodded. "I suppose on some level I don't," she admitted frankly.

"Jesus Lindsay!" Danny said with a shake of his head before he could stop himself from reacting. "What do I have to do to convince you?"

"I don't know!" Lindsay shot back in irritation. "That's what we're here to figure out, isn't it?"

"This frustrates you?" Samantha asked of Danny.

"Damn right it does!" he replied heatedly. "It's like it doesn't matter how many times I say it, she just doesn't believe it – not completely anyway. Every time I think I've _finally_ gotten through to her, she drags us straight back to square one. I can't win."

"Rest assured we'll work on remedying that," Samantha told him soothingly, "But let's just set it aside for now and finish what we've started, okay?"

"I don't think I can do this," Lindsay interrupted tearfully, her emotional strength shot to pieces by Danny's impassioned outburst. "It's just too hard!"

"You're nearly there," Samantha told her in a tone of calm encouragement. "One more to go, and then it's Danny's turn for the spot-light. Just take a deep breath and spit it out."

"Okay, okay," Lindsay murmured, closing her eyes as she struggled to regain control. "The last one… it… I guess I want to know 'why _not_ me?' but I… I don't mean it in the same way as 'why me?' It's more about him this time."

"How so?" Samantha prompted.

"It's just… he never turns to me when he needs someone to lean on," she said in a rush. "It started with Rikki Sandoval, but it's more than that. I'm the last person he'll trust with anything that's emotionally painful to him. It's always someone else he goes to."

"Other women you mean?"

"It feels like that sometimes, but no, not entirely. I'm his wife, but it's like I'm only there for companionship, sex, being a mother to Lucy… I'm not his emotional support system – other people fulfil that role for him. It's not as if I expect him to confide everything to me, but I expect to be at least on the list of possibilities. To me, that's a big part of what marriage is all about so without it…?" She broke off and shrugged. "Well, something really important is missing isn't it?"

"Do you look to him for emotional support?" Samantha asked her.

Lindsay nodded. "I don't find it easy sometimes, but yes, yes, I do. But when I do I feel like I'm a burden to him, like... like…"

"Like you're not good enough?" Samantha interjected when words once again failed her.

"Yeah, like I'm not good enough," Lindsay agreed, "But that's bringing it back to me again, isn't it? And it's not about that - it's about him not trusting me with such things, not the other way round."

"So what you're really saying is that you feel that he doesn't trust in your love any more than you trust in his?" Samantha suggested.

Lindsay looked at Danny, pain rife in her gaze. "Yes, I guess I am," she said. "How messed up is that, huh? I mean, we _want_ to be together, but we can't let go enough to allow that to happen. We keep on fighting it." She shook her head sadly. "Maybe we're kidding ourselves thinking that this is ever going to work," she said despondently. "Maybe we should just call it quits and go our separate ways."

"Is that really what you want, or is that just the fear of change talking?" Samantha said.

Lindsay bit her bottom lip in agitation. "I'm scared to let go…"

"Of him or yourself?"

"Both, I guess – but mostly of myself."

"If Danny trusted you with his heart in the way that you want him to, would that reassure you? Give you the strength to put your heart on the line where he was concerned?"

"Yes, yes I think it would," Lindsay replied with nod.

"And does the same go for you?" Samantha asked of Danny.

He hesitated and then nodded his agreement. "We're sabotaging ourselves, aren't we?" he remarked ruefully, "Locking our relationship into a permanent Catch-22?"

Samantha nodded. "It does seem that way, yes, but the first step in moving past that is recognising it for what it is, so I think we've achieved something important here."

"So now it's up to one of us to break the deadlock?" Danny asked.

"Or you break free of it together," Samantha told him. "Is there any one specific issue that you think your problems particularly stem from?" she asked then.

Danny shifted uncomfortably, guilt weighing heavy on his soul. "Err yeah, umm… Rikki Sandoval … I uhh…" He looked away guiltily. "Well you know."

"Slept with her?" Samantha supplied.

Danny nodded. "Yes."

"And that was the cause of your break-up?"

Danny immediately shook his head. "No, no, I mean it was years ago, before we were married. It was a stupid, one-off mistake – infidelity is not something I make a habit of, I assure you. _But_, it did leave its mark on us all the same. We never really dealt with it, you see. It was too painful to talk about so we just pushed it aside and moved on."

"But it came back to haunt you when you least expected it to?" Samantha guessed.

Danny shrugged. "You could say that, yeah, and I guess that's where my fear comes from. All that was in the past for me; I thought it was in the past for both of us. Next thing I knew, she was turning round and saying 'sorry, didn't mean that after all.' She punished me for it years afterwards and it cut me off at the knees when she did."

"So that's why you want 'Lindsay to understand just how badly her filing for divorce affected me'?" Samantha asked, quoting from his list.

Danny nodded. "Yes, because I don't think she truly gets it even now."

"I broke his heart, I know that," Lindsay cut in.

"As payback?" Samantha asked, her tone direct.

"No!" Lindsay said, horrified at the suggestion. "No! That's not how I operate. Maybe the whole thing with Rikki wasn't as in the past as I allowed him to believe, but I didn't consciously set out to hurt him, I swear I didn't."

"But clearly Danny doesn't think that…"

"I didn't say that," Danny denied. "I said I didn't think she understood how deeply our split affected me. That's partly due to some of the issues on Lindsay's list, I suppose. She doesn't understand why I love her, so to her that means that I don't – or least it means that I don't feel as strongly about her as she does about me."

"So you can't possibly have been hurt in the same way?" Samantha surmised.

Danny nodded. "Exactly."

"So – is that true?" Samantha asked Lindsay. "_Do_ you believe that?"

Lindsay wanted to deny it, but found that she couldn't, not completely. However unjustified it was; part of her did think that. She hadn't recognised the potent effect of her actions upon him because she couldn't accept that he loved her even half as much as she had loved him. But then his actions before _and_ after their split hadn't helped matters, had they? He'd turned to Rikki all those years ago instead of her. He'd moved on with Rachel because he couldn't stand being alone. What was she supposed to think? How was she supposed to feel?

"It's hard to trust him," she said, side-stepping the question because she wasn't sure how to answer.

"In other words, yes," Danny cut in acidly.

"Well, can you blame me?" she demanded hotly. "Why do you think Rachel's such an issue for me? If I hurt you that badly, why were you with her?"

"It's not like I started seeing her straight away," he protested. "Jesus Lindsay! It was months after we split. I thought we were over and done with back then."

"And yet now you're claiming to still love me, to have loved me all along," she shot back. "Can't you see how sometimes that's difficult for me to believe?"

Forced to confront how his actions, however unintentionally, had exacerbated her insecurities, he stared at her helplessly, not knowing what to say.

"Do you accept that what she's feeling is valid?" Samantha interjected.

Danny sighed. "Yes, of course I do. It's just that I don't look at it that way. It wasn't how it was, it wasn't."

"People deal with loss in different ways," Samantha explained. "Some of us want to curl up in a ball and hide away from the world and everything in it. Some of us put on a brave face, grab the nearest life-raft, and soldier on regardless. Can I assume from what I've heard that Rachel was someone you dated while you and Lindsay were separated?"

Danny nodded. "Yes."

"So this Rachel was your life-raft, your way of coming to terms with what you'd lost?"

"I suppose."

"Did you love her?"

"I thought I did at the time, but I was always aware that what I felt for her wasn't in the same league as what I felt for Lindsay."

"And in retrospect?"

"And in retrospect, I can see that I was just using her to make me feel better. Not deliberately, but using her all the same." He looked at Lindsay. "You never told me it bothered you that much," he complained.

"I know," she admitted. "And I should have done. I was trying to be mature about it, you know? It's not as if you weren't free to be with her. I don't really have a right to be jealous, do I?"

Danny frowned. "Is that what this is? Jealousy?"

Lindsay shrugged. "More like inadequacy."

He sighed. "Lindsay…"

She closed her eyes. "I can't help it."

Danny looked appealingly at Samantha. "I don't know what I can say to make it right," he told her plaintively.

"Is it really about that?" she asked him. "Isn't it more about recognising where you've gone wrong in the past and working on not repeating those mistakes in the future?"

"It should be, but is it really?" Danny demanded. "Most of the time it feels like I have to prove something to her."

Samantha turned to Lindsay. "Is that what you expect?" she asked.

"I guess I have in the past," Lindsay admitted, "But I can see that's not really very fair on him. I mean what proof can he give? In the end, it's down to trust. I have to trust him, just like he has to trust me."

"Couldn't have said it better myself," Samantha concluded. "So, I guess the million dollar question is: can you learn to let go of your fears and trust each other? Or are you going to keep on putting up unnecessary walls and ultimately tear each other – and your marriage - apart?"

_**To be**__** continued…**_

_**A/N2: And she**__** annoyingly went and finished it on a cliff-hanger… Naughty CharmedBec! LOL! xx**_


	29. Sleepless in New York

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes****: **Hi! New chapter for you all. A little lighter in tone than previous instalments, although there is still plenty of emotion to go round. Hope you enjoy!

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 29 – Sleepless in New York**_

_**T**__**wo weeks later…**_

With a twist of his wrist and a downward thrust of his leg, Danny gunned the engine of his Harley and pulled away from the kerb, expertly weaving his way through the late-night traffic as his bike quickly gathered speed. The rhythmic vibration of the engine between his jean-clad thighs reverberated throughout his whole body, instilling a tranquil calm that had not been present only a few short minutes before.

The night was clear and tinged with the bite of approaching winter, but his padded leather jacket and matching gloves, along with the thick woollen scarf wrapped tightly around his neck, protected him from the majority of the chill. Free to simply enjoy the exhilaration of the ride for what it was therefore, he was able to empty his mind of all extraneous thought and metaphorically discard the emotional baggage he'd been carrying around for past week or more in the nearest available dumpster.

Juggling both his work and home lives was becoming increasingly difficult as the press attention on the 'See No Evil' case became ever more intense. The leads they had to go on were sketchy at best, the myriad of evidence gathered from the four separate crime scenes providing very few clues to either the killer's intent or their identity. Mac was on Danny's case night and day, making him go over and over the evidence, demanding answers where there were none to be found.

Having born witness to any number of irate phone-calls and personal visits from the Mayor's office and the Chief of Police, he fully understood his boss's seemingly unreasonable behaviour. Unfortunately, that didn't make it any easier to deal with. In addition to that, there was Lindsay and her demands on his time, not to mention his fatherly responsibilities towards his little daughter, who was too young to understand why Daddy had to work instead of spending his usual amount of time in her company.

All too often recently, he'd felt as if his head were about to explode from all the pressure piled upon him. Instead of giving into the rising urge to ram his fist repeatedly into any available wall however, he continued to fulfil his duty on both the work and home fronts as best he could, snatching what little time was left to eat, sleep and grab a few precious moments to himself – something that was becoming increasingly important to the preservation of his sanity if truth be told…

His cell phone vibrated in his inside pocket then, and he groaned in frustration, but slowed his bike and pulled over to the side of the road to answer the call nevertheless. Lindsay, he noted from the flashing display – what on earth was she calling him for at this time of the night, he wondered.

"Hey," he greeted her, his tone flat.

"Hey," she replied, unfazed by his lack of animation. "Where are you?"

"I was just taking a ride," he told her. "I only escaped work an hour ago."

"Have you eaten?" she asked him.

He rubbed agitatedly at his forehead with the pads of his fingers. "I was planning on grabbing a late night burger," he said.

"Need some company?" she enquired.

He frowned. "What about Lucy?"

"Stella said she'd watch her."

"It's less than an hour to midnight, Lindsay," Danny bemoaned. "Shouldn't you be thinking about going to bed?"

"Shouldn't you?" she countered.

He shook his head in weary resignation. "I'm too wired," he told her. "I'd just toss and turn and drive myself crazy in the process."

"Danny…"

"Look, I can't do this right now, okay?" he snapped at her irritably. "I'm sorry, but I just can't! Whatever you need can wait until tomorrow surely?"

There was noticeable pause on the other end of the call, and when Lindsay did eventually speak; her voice was tight and controlled, and more than a little tense. "I was worried about you, Danny," she informed him frostily. "You've just worked another double-shift – how many is that in a row now? Plus, Stella said you seemed really down earlier. I figured you might need a friendly ear, but if you'd rather go it alone as usual…"

Remorseful now that the selfless motive behind her call had become abundantly clear, Danny dropped his head down onto the handlebars of his bike and closed his eyes. "No, no, I'm sorry. It's just that I thought that I'd finally managed to grab a few minutes of peace and then…"

"I called and you assumed I'd be all clingy and needy?" Lindsay finished for him, her voice an incongruous mixture of gentle understanding and stinging sarcasm.

He sighed. "Now you're making me feel like a right a-hole," he said.

"Good," was Lindsay's no-nonsense reply, "I'd call that progress, wouldn't you?"

Danny smiled in spite of himself. "How soon can you get to 'The Midnight Hour'?" he asked, referring to one of the many late-night establishments traditionally frequented by New York's finest.

"Well, I don't know. I guess it depends on how soon you can pick me up on that boy-toy of yours," Lindsay replied.

"Boy-toy!" he protested. "I'll have you know this bike's a classic piece of machinery."

She laughed at his all too predictable indignation. "You're so easy!" she told him.

Already feeling considerably lighter in spirit than he had done a few minutes ago, Danny chuckled. "I'll see you in fifteen," he told her, and then ended their call and executed a rapid 360°.

Twenty minutes later, he drew up outside Stella's apartment building to find Lindsay waiting for him on the sidewalk. "You're late," she informed him, as the roar of the bike's engine faded into nothing.

"I had to swing by my apartment to pick up this," he said, reaching behind him to retrieve the object he'd been home to collect.

"You kept it!" Lindsay exclaimed, taking the personalised indigo-coloured helmet from his outstretched hand. Turning it over, she ran her fingers reverently over the silver lettering around the rim. 'Messer's Mrs' it read. It had been meant as something of a joke, but it gave her a deep thrill of possession nonetheless.

Danny had given it to her as a belated wedding present on her return from Montana just before Lucy's birth. Other men would have bought diamonds, but, ever the maverick; her new husband had chosen to present her with a personal key to his pride-and-joy instead. Boy-toy it may be, but along with his ancient baseball bat and mitt, it was very much a part of the man he was. Despite being voluminous with child at the time, she'd been ridiculously touched by the sentiment behind the rather outlandish gift. It had taken all of her will-power not to burst into embarrassingly soppy tears over a bow-wrapped motorcycle helmet of all things.

"I resisted the urge to melt it down for scrap," Danny joked, softening the blow with an affectionate smile. "I couldn't have gotten rid of it, Linds," he went on to assure her, his tone serious once again. "No matter how angry I was at you."

"Here; let me," he said, taking it from her grasp and fitting it securely on her head. "You got any gloves?" he asked, noticing her bare hands as he pulled the strap tight under her chin. "The cross-wind's got a real bite to it tonight."

"Sure," she said, removing the woollen garments from her coat pocket and pulling them on over her dainty fingers. Putting a hand on his shoulder to steady herself, she swung her leg over the back of the bike and shifted around until she was comfortable. Wrapping her arms snugly around his waist, she rested her forehead between his shoulder-blades and let out a small sigh. "I missed this," she confessed in a wistful tone.

"Boy-toys have their compensations, huh?" Danny asked, his voice light and teasing.

Lindsay tightened her arms around his middle and turned her head so that her left cheek was resting comfortably against his back. "They hold a certain appeal," she admitted grudgingly.

Danny laughed. "Don't scrimp on the enthusiasm there, babe," he remarked over his shoulder, and then kick-started the bike's engine, effectively curtailing any further conversation between the two of them.

It didn't matter though. Something about the warmth of her body-heat seeping through the leather of his jacket, together with the slight weight of her resting comfortably against his back, had the knots of tension in his stomach slowly unravelling. The calming effect of a solo bike-ride was one thing, but the added benefit of female company took things to another level. Her delicate perfume teased his senses as they rode through the city streets, while her delighted squeal when he took a turn at speed inexplicably lifted his mood in a way that nothing else could.

She wasn't the only one who'd missed this, he realised. Most of his previous girlfriends had been fairly ambivalent about his Harley once the initial novelty had worn off. Lindsay was a different matter entirely however. She enjoyed the subtle sense of danger involved, the thrill of doing something that was just that little bit wild and adventurous. It was an attitude that set her apart from all the other women in his life somehow.

His wife had lived a fairly sheltered existence in many respects, he'd discovered as he'd gotten to know her better. While he often viewed Montana as a mesmerising and complex wilderness, he could see that she must have held New York in the same regard when she'd first arrived here from Bozeman. Sure, she was at home in the Big Apple now, but in the beginning, it must have been a considerable adjustment for her.

Being with him was another rung climbed on a ladder to a different existence for her. Girls like Lindsay Monroe did not date bad boys with motorbikes. And all right so he may not have been the proverbial James Dean-type, but, closeted by her over-protective family as she was, he still represented a world that she hadn't been free to be part of before.

Maybe that's why, despite their problems, they complimented each other so well. They each fulfilled a need in the other to experience something different, something beyond what they were used to. They had so much in common, and yet their upbringings had been poles apart. They were like a claddagh wedding ring in some respects – two disparate pieces that fit together to make one complete whole.

"You know I should probably start thinking about getting Lucy one of these," he said as he took her helmet from her around twenty minutes later.

"No way, José," Lindsay said with an adamant shake of her head. "She's not getting on the back of that thing until she's at least twenty-one."

Danny laughed. "And I thought I was the over-protective one," he commented dryly. "Not to mention the fact that's kind of hypocritical of you, don't you think?"

"Seeing as you get such an obvious thrill from a good ride, I mean," he added, brushing a knowing finger over her flushed cheek and winking at her cheekily.

From the wicked glint in his eye, Lindsay knew he was well aware of the double-entrendre in his words. "Says the guy who claims no man is getting near enough to his daughter to get her pregnant when he had no qualms about implanting her in her mother's belly in the first place," she retorted.

"Touché," Danny said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. "How about we declare a truce and move on?" he suggested after a beat.

"Just because you know you're never going to win," she teased before magnanimously granting his request. Framing his face in her hands, she kissed him affectionately, her lips warm and soft against his.

Sitting side-saddle on the padded seat of his Harley, Danny hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her closer. As she lifted her arms to return his embrace, he dropped his face into the crook of her neck, breathing in of her familiar scent. Curling one arm around his broad shoulders, she gently ran the fingers of her other hand through his short crop of dark blonde hair, and he relaxed more fully against her, letting her take on some of the weight of his whirling emotions.

Lindsay felt tears prick at the back of her eyes as she felt his unconscious surrender. This was what she'd been wanting from him all along. She still needed to understand why he hadn't trusted her with such things before, but the fact that he was now letting her in was a massive step in the right direction. A tiny spark of hope ignited deep inside her heart. Perhaps they could make it through this after all.

"I guess the counselling'sworking, huh?" she remarked when they drew apart a short while later.

Danny nodded. "There's nothing like being confronted with your failings as a husband to bring you to your senses," he concurred.

His somewhat fatalistic response had her frowning with concern. "Danny…" she began.

"Ssh," he said, placing a finger over her lips to silence her. "We don't need to get into that now. Let's just let it be how it's supposed to be, yeah?"

Lindsay nodded. "Okay," she agreed, and then deliberately shook off her downbeat mood. "So," she announced peremptorily, "You need to eat. I bet you haven't had anything since lunch, have you?"

"Apart from a pack of cheese curls from the vending machine about five hours ago, no," Danny replied as he bent to secure his bike to the railings.

"Which is hardly what you'd call a balanced diet," she said, hooking her arm though his as they headed for the restaurant across the street.

"Yeah, greasy burger and fries is much more nutritious," he joked back.

A minute or so later, they pushed open the door to the late-night diner and stepped over the threshold into the brightly-lit interior, the bell above their heads jangling at their entry. After pausing to exchange greetings with a number of their fellow officers along the way, they eventually settled in a booth in the corner, which afforded them the privacy that they wanted.

"You could go for the grilled barbecue chicken," Lindsay suggested after a quick glance at the menu. "If you substitute potato wedges for fries, and order a nice side salad to go with it, you'd be on the right track."

"You making my menu choices for me now, babe?" Danny commented with lifted eyebrows.

Lindsay shrugged. "It's up to you, of course, but you need to start considering the consequences of your food choices before it's too late."

"And what consequences would those be?" he asked.

"Well, the regular gym workouts may keep things at bay right now," she told him, her tone serious but her eyes sparkling with underlying mischief. "But in a couple of year's time, when middle age spread starts to set in, that sexy toned upper body of yours is going to be a thing of the dim and distant past…"

"So you think my body's sexy, do you?" Danny enquired, ignoring the teasing insult and focusing on the unintentional compliment she'd given him instead.

The question called to mind an all too graphic image and two bright spots of pink appeared on the apples of Lindsay's cheeks in response. "Can I plead the fifth?" she asked.

Danny laughed, the sound making her flush an even rosier red.

"Cut it out," she protested.

He grinned. "I'm sorry, but it's a damn fine way to relieve the tension if you ask me."

She frowned. "Is that what this is about?" she asked, "A release of work pressure?"

"No, of course not," Danny answered, affronted by the idea. "I'm not saying some hot, sweaty between-the-sheets action wouldn't help with that right about now, but I would never allow it to be my only motivation."

Lindsay considered, unsure of quite how they'd managed to arrive at this topic of conversation. "We've not talked it over with Samantha yet," she pointed out. Two counselling sessions in and there had been other more important things to discuss than their currently non-existent sex life.

Danny nodded. "I know – we should probably bring it up tomorrow, I guess."

Lindsay couldn't stop the smile that tugged at the corner of her lips. "You're that desperate, huh?"

Danny shot her a rueful grimace. "Is it that obvious?" he said, and then sighed. "I suppose it's as I said a while back: our decision was the right one at the time, but we're gonna need to re-establish some level of physical intimacy at some point if we want to get things properly back on track."

"And you think that now's the time, do you?" Lindsay asked him gravely.

Danny nodded. "I think we're ready to take things past first-base at least," he said, "Even if we're not yet ready to knock one out of the ball-park so to speak."

Lindsay laughed. "You and your baseball analogies."

Danny grinned. "You understand where I'm coming from through?"

"Somewhere below the belt," she quipped naughtily, and then giggled, a bright uninhibited sound that sparkled like moon-dust in the air between them.

"I'm trying to be serious here," Danny lamented.

Lindsay schooled her features into a more sober expression with some degree of effort. "I know," she said. "I'm sorry. I understand what you're trying to say – honestly I do. We can bring the subject up with Samantha tomorrow if that's what you want."

The waitress interrupted them to take their order then. In spite of his earlier objections, Danny went with his wife's menu choice for him, while Lindsay ordered herself a piece of apple pie with a side of vanilla sauce, having already eaten her main meal earlier that evening.

Their conversation turned to their daughter as they consumed their food. "She's mightily proud of herself right now," Lindsay said. "She completed another page of her sticker-book at pre-school today."

Lucy's pre-school ran a rewards system whereby good behaviour or a task well-done earned the children a 'happy-face' sticker, and a full page earned them a small reward – like being allowed to pick the book for story-time, for example. Danny and Lindsay had chosen to re-enforce this system at home, allowing their daughter a special treat whenever she completed a page.

"So what she sting you for this time?" Danny asked with fatherly good-humour.

Lindsay hesitated, suddenly wishing she hadn't brought the subject up.

"Why am I not getting a good feeling about this?" Danny said, putting his cutlery down as his stomach contracted unpleasantly.

Lindsay reached across the table and placed her hand over his. "She misses you, that's all," she said, squeezing his fingers comfortingly.

"I assume I figure prominently in this treat of hers then?"

Lindsay nodded. "You have the starring role," she confirmed. "She wants Daddy to stay at home and play with her for the whole day."

Danny pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and his forefinger. "Okay so now I feel even guiltier that I did before," he said despairingly.

"It's not your fault, Danny," Lindsay told him earnestly. "So you're a little absent at the moment, but it won't be forever, will it? It's not as if this kind of case happens regularly. She needs to understand that Mommy and Daddy have other responsibilities to consider besides her."

"She shouldn't have to suffer for them though, Lindsay," Danny pointed out.

"I know – which is why we're going to do everything in our power to grant her request."

Danny snorted. "Yeah like Mac's going to give me a day off right now. We're lucky he's still letting me have the time off to go to counselling. I'm on the rota six days a week, and I'm not up to much on the seventh, believe me. All I want to do is crash out at my apartment and sleep."

"You're off Thursday this week, right?"

Danny nodded. "Yeah."

"And I'm supposed to be off on Friday so how about I work your shift for you instead?"

"Lindsay…"

"This is for Lucy, Danny – and for you too. You need a break. You'll have Thursday to recharge your batteries, and then all day Friday to spend with Lucy. You'll feel tons better after that, I know you will."

"You really think Mac will go for it?" Danny asked doubtfully.

"Of course he will," Lindsay told him confidently. "We just have to pull out the big guns and it's a done deal."

"The big guns?" Danny asked in confusion.

Lindsay nodded. "We'll have Lucy ask him," she decided with aplomb.

Danny laughed in spite of himself. "That's emotional blackmail!"

Lindsay grinned. "Yeah well, if needs must…"

He shook his head. "You're a wicked woman, Lindsay Messer," he informed her.

She lifted her shoulders in a careless shrug. "So sue me."

Danny didn't respond to that. Instead he studied her carefully, his blue eyes speculative.

"What?" Lindsay asked softly when the intensity of his continued gaze stripped away her outer layer of defences.

"I love you," was Danny's somewhat unexpected response, "Plus I'm a Grade A idiot for not realising the true meaning of that until it was almost too late."

Lindsay's brow furrowed in confusion. "Okay so now you've lost me," she confessed.

Danny brought his hand up to rub at the back of his neck. "I have a habit of holding you at arm's length. I mean look at tonight – it took you foisting your company on me to make me realise how much I needed it."

"So w-why do you think that is?" Lindsay asked uncertainly. She wasn't sure this was the best place for them to discuss this, but she knew that they had to learn to start tackling issues when they occurred instead of pushing them aside to deal with later. Especially as more often that not, later never arrived.

"I umm… I don't know," Danny answered, and then took a moment to think about it more carefully. "I guess I just… it sounds really dumb… but I suppose I didn't want anything to spoil what we had."

"You mean when we first got together?"

Danny nodded. "Yeah – you'd been through a rough time what with the court case and everything, and I guess I felt I had to be the fun guy for you all the time."

"I never asked that of you, Danny."

"No – it was a requirement I put on myself. Because I wanted to give that to you, and also because that's all relationships had ever been to me up until that point."

"A bit of fun, you mean?"

Danny nodded. "Before you, if a woman started asking for commitment then I'd turn and run in the opposite direction as fast as I could."

"Why?"

"I told myself it was because I wasn't ready to settle down, that I was doing them a favour ending things before they were disappointed."

"But you stuck it out with me…"

"Yes – because I didn't want to have to let you go. You… You meant too much. You'd made an impression, stirred something within me that I'd always been careful to avoid."

"So why couldn't you come to me… after… after…" She trailed off, unable to say the words, but being brave enough not to look away from him so that he could read her question in her eyes.

Danny looked back at her helplessly, equally numbed by the unexpected resurfacing of that long-time buried pain. "I… I don't think that we should…," he stuttered. "Not here…"

"Danny…"

"I'm not avoiding," he insisted. "But if there's one conversation that we need to have with a counsellor present then that's it."

"I know," Lindsay said, her voice barely audible.

Danny blew out his breath from between his lips with some relief. "I thought Samantha would suggest we tackle that first," he admitted.

Lindsay nodded. "Me too."

"I suppose I can see the logic behind not doing so," Danny went on thoughtfully. "Working on our communication skills so that we're more comfortable being so emotionally frank with each other… I mean it makes sense to do that first, I guess."

Lindsay lips curled up into a faint smile. "Why do I sense there's a but in there somewhere?" she said.

Danny sighed. "Don't you feel like it's this huge great landslide blocking our way?" he asked, the question essentially rhetoric. "If we don't bite the bullet and clear it to one side soon, we're never going to get any further along the road to where we want to be."

Lindsay echoed his sigh. "I know what you mean," she said. "I feel that too. I'm afraid of it blowing up in our faces, but I'm scared of fully committing my heart until I know that we can get past that."

"Samantha did say it was up to us how we used the therapy sessions," Danny reminded her. "I trust in her judgement, but I think we should at least bring up the possibility with her, don't you?"

Lindsay nodded. "Yeah, I do – I guess it kind of goes hand-in-hand with us resuming our love life anyway."

"It does?" Danny asked, somewhat puzzled by the logic behind that.

Lindsay met his gaze, her eyes full of deep-felt emotion. "That night at my parents place," she began. "I needed that. I needed to feel wanted by you again. It helped me believe that this second chance could be real, that it wasn't just some unattainable fantasy of mine. Despite everything that had happened between us, the connection was still there and it was more than just a physical… I mean it _was_ more than that, wasn't it?"

Danny reached across the table and took both her hands in his. "It was a timely reawakening is what it was," he said.

"A reawakening," Lindsay mused, her gaze locked on their joined hands. "That's an apt way of describing it, I suppose. The thing is I'm not sure I can commit myself in that way again until we've addressed the… the… Rikki issue and how it made me feel, about myself, about you…"

She lifted her gaze back to his. "Because when we do cross that line, Danny, I want it to be special. And if we haven't dealt with all of that beforehand, it'd just be sex – good sex maybe, but something that'd leave us feeling kind of hollow once it was over even so."

Danny nodded. "I get you," he said, and then smiled softly at her, the expression genuine if a trifle frayed around the edges. "We're making progress here, huh?"

"We are," Lindsay concurred with an answering smile.

"You finished with that?" he asked after a beat, indicating her half-eaten pie.

"Help yourself," she invited, pushing the plate towards him. "And Danny?"

"Mmm?"

"Talk to me, okay? Follow through with what you started earlier. Vent the frustration I know you're feeling about the progress of the case. Allow me to be your shoulder to lean on. Let me be your wife in the way that I want to be."

He threw her a rather crooked smile. "Sure, I can do that."

"Pinkie swear?" She held out her hand towards him, her little finger at the ready.

Danny smiled and reached across the table to affirm that vow. "Pinkie swear," he agreed.

**OOOOOO**

"You can be special too, you know. If Fiona Fairy sprinkles you with her magic-dust, you'll grow wings and be able to fly to the moon…"

Although the act was decidedly against his body's will, Danny stirred as the familiar, sweetly piping voice registered on his sleep-addled brain. He kept his eyes firmly closed until full wakefulness had descended, and then cautiously lifted his eyelids a fraction to assess his current position.

He was greeted with the sight of Lindsay's sleeping face on the pillow beside him. Now that he was more cognisant of his surroundings, he could feel the warmth of her hand against his skin where it rested lightly against his rib-cage and the moist puff of her breath over his face. Keeping his movements slow and subtle, he turned his head a little until his daughter entered his field of view.

Dressed in pink-and-white striped pyjamas, the little girl was sitting cross-legged on the bed-spread at their feet, playing an imaginative game of make-believe with her toy horse and her stuffed bunny, Molly. Somewhat incongruously, she hadn't woken her sleeping parents from their slumber, but instead seemed perfectly content to await their natural emergence from dreams into reality.

Danny shut his eyes again as he tried to organise the events of the previous evening in his mind. He hadn't intended to stay. He remembered escorting Lindsay home and not wanting to part company with her straightaway. Back at the diner, he'd done as she'd asked and off-loaded his troubles to her sympathetic ears and had felt infinitely better for it afterwards. Why had he thought it would be so hard? In the end, it had been the most natural thing in the world to unburden himself to the woman he loved more than life itself.

He sighed inwardly. The truth was it was only easy now because he'd finally recognised what it was he'd been missing all this time. Lindsay's words in their first therapy session had struck a real chord with him. What had she said when she'd been explaining how his reluctance to confide in her had affected her sense of belonging and self-worth?

'_To me, that's a big part of what marriage is all about so without it… well, something really important is missing isn't it?'_

He couldn't see it before, but he could now. For reasons he was yet to fully understand, he'd been jealously guarding that missing jigsaw piece and refusing to let it see the light of day. Now that he'd finally relinquished possession of it though, things were at long last starting to slot into their rightful place. Hence he'd readily agreed to Lindsay's offer of hot chocolate last night, grabbing hold of the convenient excuse to savour their newly discovered intimacy for a few minutes more.

Question was - how had he gotten from there to here?

He remembered sinking into the squishy cushions of the sofa as Lindsay clattered about in the kitchen beyond. He recalled closing his eyes for just a second and promptly dozing off. He vaguely remembered Lindsay shaking him awake again, and blinking at her owlishly as he tried to bring her face fully into focus. He had been so tired, exhausted beyond measure by that point.

After that his memory only provided him with blurred impressions… Lindsay's soft melodic voice talking him to encouragingly, her fingers warm and gentle against his skin, her lips pressed moist and tender to his brow. And finally, the light, fragrant smell of her filling his nostrils as his exhausted body tumbled towards blessed unconsciousness.

Had they made love? He didn't think so, he was pretty sure he hadn't been remotely capable of performing, plus his muscles lacked that pleasant morning-after ache too. Not to mention the fact that he still wore his boxers and Lindsay's tiny frame was decently clad in a pair of pale blue tap-pants and matching camisole.

He reached out a hand to run a finger over the delicate arch of her cheekbone, his movement attracting his daughter's attention as well as prompting a drowsy murmur of complaint from his slumbering wife.

"Hi Daddy! Did you and Mommy decide to have sleep-over?"

Danny suppressed a chuckle as he watched Lindsay's eyes pop open in sudden, blind panic. "Morning babe," he greeted her in a dry tone, and then turned to smile at his inquisitive daughter.

"We did," he confirmed with a grave nod.

"Cool!" Lucy declared. "Did you eat choc-late and popsicles?"

"Yeah and we had a pillow fight too!" he responded with amused animation.

"Really?" Lucy's sapphire-blue eyes were as wide as saucers.

"Danny!" Lindsay admonished as he broke into delighted laughter. "Daddy's just teasing you, honey," she told their daughter.

"Daddy's naughty," Lucy claimed, her bowed lips settling into an adorable pout.

"Yes, he is," Lindsay concurred. "Very naughty. I think he needs to be punished, don't you?"

Lucy nodded. "Does he get a toy con-skated?" she asked.

"My favourite toy's already out of bounds," Danny said in a low-toned voice, earning himself a slap across the chest from his wife.

"Oh, I think we can do better than that, don't you?" she said to Lucy, a wicked little smile playing at the corners of her lips. "I mean that kind of behaviour deserves nothing less than the…" She paused dramatically for effect. "Tickle-monster!" she announced before she pounced, displaying far too much relish in Danny's opinion.

Lucy squealed with delight and dived in with enthusiasm until her besieged father was forced to declare a cease-fire. "I'll get you for that!" he told a grinning Lindsay as Lucy wriggled her way in between them and snuggled in close.

"And you too, little missy," he said, dropping a kiss on the nose of his beaming daughter before reaching an arm across her to gather his wife in close.

Lindsay leaned up to meet his lips with hers and let out a small contented sound when he took his time in exploring her offered mouth. When they eventually broke apart, she dropped her head into the hollow of his collarbone, closing her eyes as he nuzzled his face into her hair. His arms full of his little family, and his heart full of emotion that he hadn't felt in a very long time, Danny relaxed back against the pillows and savoured the early-morning moment of pure contentment for what it was - a poignant reminder of everything that they were fighting so hard for.

"I love you," he whispered almost desperately into Lindsay's hair.

"I love you too," she quietly returned, her voice just as tremulous.

His arms tightened imperceptibly around her, as if by holding her close, he could keep her thus forever. Try as they might though, it wasn't possible to ignore the indelible blot on the picture-perfect landscape that they'd painted for themselves. It was finally time to crack open the seal on the issue that had blighted the fabric of their relationship from its early beginnings right up until this very day. It was finally time to deal with the consequences of his night with Rikki Sandoval once and for all…

_**To be**__** continued…**_

_**A/N2: **__Uh-oh - another cliff-hanger – a real one this time rather than the suggestion of one as with the last chapter. And yes, I know I've used the motorcycle helmet idea before in my story 'What Might Have Been' but you gotta have some continuity! LOL! Plus, for some unexplainable reason, I love the idea of Lindsay riding on the back of Danny's Harley. They're probably never going to give us a scene like that on the show so it's my responsibility to write it into my stories, don't you think? :-)_

_Anyhow – until next time… CharmedBec x_


	30. Forgive Me My Sins

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes****: **Hey all! New part for you. Main author's notes are at the end because they're a little spoiler-y, so for now, let's get on with the show...

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 30 – Forgive Me My Sins**_

_**Later that same day…**_

They spoke very little during lunch, the cosy familiarity of that morning worlds away now. This was make-or-break time for them and they were all too aware of it. Consequently, the prospect of failure weighed heavily on both their minds as the hour of reckoning rapidly approached.

Lindsay had to practically force the food past the obstructive lump in her throat. Her appetite was minimal to non existent, but she knew that she needed sustenance to enable her to get through the rest of the day. Over-wrought emotions had a tendency to make her feel distinctly light-headed and weak, so she needed her blood sugar levels to be normal if she wasn't going to faint from the unavoidable stress.

Danny, in contrast, ate like an automaton, barely tasting his food as it went down. The activity gave him something to focus on: slice, fork, chew, swallow… slice, fork, chew, swallow… The repetitive nature soothed, even as his mind was racing fifteen to the dozen. He still hadn't worked out what he was going to say, and was desperately worried that it would come out all wrong when the time came for him to explain about his ill-fated association with Rikki Sandoval.

The tension between them escalated to fever-pitch as they took the short subway ride to their therapist's office. They could scarcely bring themselves to look at each other en route, let alone conduct any kind of sensible conversation. Before they knew it, two o'clock had arrived and they were being escorted through into the treatment room by Dr Whittaker's cheery receptionist.

"So," Samantha said slowly, observing the pale, drawn faces of the young couple before her. "I take it we've reached some kind of crossroads since our last session?"

"Yes, umm…" Danny stopped and cleared his throat, searching for the nerve to face what must be faced. "We err… we had something of a breakthrough last night…"

"You did?" Samantha prompted when he faltered.

"Yeah umm… I've been having a rough time at work lately and instead of dealing with it on my own like I would have done before…"

"He accepted my offer of a shoulder to lean on," Lindsay put in.

"Even if she did have to use some strong-arm tactics to get past my initial stone-wall," Danny finished.

"But that's a good thing right?" Samantha said, perplexed by the waves of nervous tension emanating from the two of them.

"Yes," Lindsay agreed with an incline of her head, "But breaking through that barrier got us talking about other things. We err… we realised that there was one particular issue that - if we don't deal with it soon – will always be there in the back of our minds, holding us back. If we're ever going to truly move forward then we've got to stop procrastinating and face it head-on."

The blonde therapist nodded. "I see and what issue would that be?"

Her question was met with tense silence until Danny finally managed to gather the courage to take that dreaded leap off the cliff-edge. "Rikki Sandoval," he said, the utterance of the ubiquitous name saying all that needed to be said.

Samantha didn't appear all that surprised by his declaration. In fact, it was almost as if she'd been expecting it. "Okay," she said, "Simone gave me some of the background to your case so I've not entered into this completely blind…"

Lindsay's forehead crinkled in confusion. "But we didn't discuss this with Simone," she protested.

"I did," Danny confessed. "I needed to get it out there," he explained off her surprised look. "Confession is good for the soul – isn't that what they say? No matter what happened between us afterwards, this was where we first tripped up and I wanted Simone to understand that."

"You didn't want her to judge me," Lindsay concluded quietly.

Danny nodded solemnly. "I needed her to understand that this was a two-way thing. That my past actions had established a pattern of behaviour that we've never quite managed to break free of."

"What kind of pattern?" Samantha asked him.

"A pattern of never really talking about what was most important," Danny replied, "A habit of sweeping issues under the carpet and hoping that by ignoring them they would simply go away."

Samantha nodded. "Well, it's good that you've acknowledged that tendency within yourselves," she said. "It's important that you recognise exactly where you've been going wrong."

"Is that why you haven't pushed the issue with us before now?" Danny asked her. "I mean if Simone filled you in on some of the background, you had to have realised that this was the deal-breaker, right?"

Samantha lifted her eyebrows at his astuteness. "Well, busted," she confessed, "But in answer to your question then yes – I did feel it was important that you arrived at this decision in your own time and in your own way. If I'd pushed you into talking about it before you were ready then it might have done more harm than good. By coming here today and choosing to get this out into the open, you've broken the cycle of avoidance, declared that you're no longer afraid to confront the issues that are holding you back."

"Well, I wouldn't go that far," Danny remarked dryly. "I'm about ready to pee my pants right now if you wanna know the truth."

Samantha's lips curled up into a brief smile at his wry confession before her expression turned serious again. "But you've not let it overwhelm you, have you?" she pointed out. "It's hard to push through the fear and let your guard down enough to take a risk, especially when there's no guarantee of the outcome you want. In the end, it's about being brave enough to take that leap, no matter where you might land."

"So how do we go about this?" Lindsay asked, anxious to get on with it now that the hand of fate had been irrevocably dealt.

"I guess that depends on what you want to achieve from it," Samantha answered.

"I don't know," Lindsay said uncomfortably. "I suppose I need to understand why it happened. Why things got to the point that they did."

"Then I would say the best place to start is at the beginning," Samantha said. "This was something that happened fairly early on in your relationship, I understand?"

"Reasonably early on, yeah," Danny agreed. "We'd been seeing each other around seven months by then, I think."

"And would you say that things were serious between the two of you?"

"Well, I umm…" Danny broke off and threw a wary look at Lindsay.

"Honesty's the best policy here," Samantha advised him. "The truth may hurt, but without it you're on a highway to nowhere. Be straight with each other and you'll have the best possible shot at a positive resolution."

Danny nodded, even though he was concerned about how his answer might be construed.

"So - how would you have defined your relationship at the time?" Samantha prompted when he still struggled to find the words.

"We err… we were having fun," Danny answered in a noticeably cautious tone. "I wouldn't have described our relationship as casual, but I wouldn't have said it was overly serious either."

"So you weren't exclusive then?"

"I can't claim that she changed the rules on me if that's what you're suggesting," he said. "It was understood that we wouldn't see anyone else for as long as we were together."

Samantha looked over at Lindsay. "Does that agree with your view of your relationship at the time?" she asked.

Lindsay nodded. "Pretty much, yeah. I suppose, in retrospect, I was beginning to want something more, but I figured we were in no rush. As Danny said, we were having fun, things were easy. I thought we had all the time in the world…" Her eyes dimmed with a sharp pang of regret, her lips twisting into a sad, half-smile.

"Did you love him?" Samantha asked her.

Lindsay sighed. "Looking back on it, yes, yes, I did, but if you'd asked me that question back then, I wouldn't have known how to answer it. It was there inside me, but I wasn't ready to acknowledge it. That came later... after…"

"And you?" Samantha directed her query at Danny. "What were your feelings at the time?"

"I loved being with her, I saw her in my life for the foreseeable future, but beyond that..." He shrugged noncommittally.

"What if a friend had asked you the same question?" Samantha pushed, demanding an answer that he didn't particularly want to give.

"Well, it wouldn't have been a definite no," he eventually admitted. "But I can't say it'd have been a yes either. It would have been more of a 'maybe and let's see how it goes' kind of thing."

"Does that bother you?" Samantha asked Lindsay.

"That I only rated a maybe?" she enquired.

Samantha nodded.

The pretty CSI shook her head. "No, not really, I mean I knew where we stood. Difference is 'maybe and let's see how it goes' implies some level of commitment to me."

"And you think it didn't to me?" Danny rejoined.

She shot him a look that would have frozen hell over. "Actions speak louder than words, Danny," she told him harshly, unable to prevent the underlying bitterness from escaping its confines. "Passing me over for a piece of your neighbour's ass shows just how high – or rather how low on your priority list I was.

"It wasn't about that," Danny protested, and then shook his head with a resigned sigh. "Nothing I say will make it better, will it?" he concluded wearily.

"No," Samantha agreed, "What you did can never be erased - or justified for that matter."

"So why are we here then?" he demanded, throwing his hands up in a gesture of defeat.

"Were you expecting a miracle?" Samantha asked him bluntly, "For someone to wave a magic wand and make it all better again?"

"No, no, I…" Danny faltered, and then drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly before continuing. "I suppose I'm looking for forgiveness," he said, "True forgiveness, I mean, not just the illusion of it."

"Forgiveness comes from understanding the whys and wherefores, Danny," Samantha told him.

"But what if understanding them isn't enough?" he returned fearfully.

Knowing the softly-softly approach wasn't what was required here; Samantha didn't pull any punches with her reply. "Then the two of you have got some hard decisions to make."

Danny looked positively stricken at that, and Lindsay's heart went out to him in spite of the inner resentments being stirred up by the current topic of conversation. She reached out to place a reassuring hand over his. "I'm not giving up," she assured him. "I know this is going to be painful, and, let's face it, after this is over I'm probably going to want some time alone to think, but that doesn't mean I'm on the verge of calling it quits. It hurts, but I'm trying to be as open-minded as I can."

Danny gripped her small hand tightly, almost desperately within his bigger one. "I don't want to be the one," he said shakily. "If this is the way it's going to end then I wish you'd never taken me back. I could have handled losing you back then; I don't know how to cope with it now. How am I supposed to live with the fact that something I did years ago has ruined everything that we've been to each other since? How am I supposed to look my little girl in the eye and know that I've deprived her of the family life that she deserves?"

"Danny, this isn't all on you," Lindsay told him. "Despite what happened, I chose to take you back. I could have just as easily walked away, but I didn't. I made the decision to give you a second chance and then I didn't follow through with that."

"And what about Lucy, huh?" she went on. "Would you really rather that she didn't exist?"

"No, no of course not!" Danny said, shocked at the idea. His little daughter was the light of his life. "I would never…"

He shook his head with a wry twist of his lips. "Okay - point taken," he acknowledged, and then blew out his breath from between his lips in an attempt to steady his shredded nerves. "Sorry," he apologised. "I guess I lost it there for a moment. This is all a bit overwhelming to tell you the truth."

"Because you feel as if it's all your fault?" Samantha guessed shrewdly.

Danny nodded. "Yes, and because I know that whatever I say, I can't take it back. I'm afraid that any explanation I give is just going to sound like an excuse, as if I'm trying to defend something that's indefensible."

"There are two sides to every story, Danny," Samantha told him. "This isn't about justifying what you did. It's about understanding the reasoning behind it."

"But that's the thing," Danny burst out despairingly. "There was no reason! No reason that makes any sense anyway. I didn't make a conscious choice. It just happened… and damn it that sounds so *&% lame!" He dropped his face into his hands and made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat.

"There was no question you stepped over the line, Danny," Samantha said, her voice instilling tranquil calm to storm-tossed waters. "But one mistake doesn't necessarily define the person you are. It's obvious that you regret what happened..."

"It was – and still is - the biggest regret of my life," Danny said, lifting his head to look her straight in the eye, the sincerity in his gaze matching the passion of his words.

"So let's explore why," Samantha suggested gently. "I think we've established the nature of your relationship with Lindsay at the time, so why don't you tell me how you and Rikki met?"

"She umm… she lived down the hall with her son, Ruben."

"So she moved into your apartment block, and you found yourself unexpectedly attracted to her?"

"What? No!" Danny shook his head in denial. "No, I… She moved in just after Lindsay came to New York, not long after I'd signed the lease on my own apartment. I thought she was an attractive woman, sure, but there was no spark between us. Ruben… Ruben was a pistol though. He and I got to be buddies – his Dad wasn't around, didn't make any effort to stay in touch after he and Rikki split up from what I understand."

"So you were like a surrogate father to him then?"

"More like an uncle than a father, I'd say," Danny went on. "Rikki was a bit wary of me at first, but she relaxed once she'd gotten to know me better. She understood that I meant Ruben no harm. I think she was just grateful that he had some kind of male influence in his life. Me and her – we weren't friends as such - she was just the woman down the hall with the cute kid – that's about as far as our relationship went."

He looked over at Lindsay. "My eyes were focused firmly in another direction at the time," he concluded with a touch of nostalgia in his tone.

Lindsay reached out and lightly touched his face, acknowledging the truth of that statement even as the agony of betrayal continued to build involuntary walls around her heart.

"So what changed?" Samantha asked him.

"Ruben he…" Danny closed his eyes and swallowed hard, not wanting to dredge up those painful memories, but knowing that it was necessary to do so. "He err… he wanted to get his bike blessed… I promised I'd take him to the ceremony and… ahh Jesus!"

He brought shaking hands to his face as the rising lump in his throat choked him. Lindsay bit her lip to hold back her own tears as she watched him valiantly struggle to contain his emotions. Placing a comforting hand against his bowed back, she took over from where he'd left off, filling Samantha in on the fateful events of that day so that he didn't have to relive it any more than was strictly necessary.

"…And that's when everything started to go wrong," she concluded a few minutes later. "I didn't know what to say, how to be there for him – I was never very good at that kind of thing. Maybe that showed, I don't know. He pushed me away the first time I tried to comfort him, and it remained that way from then onwards."

"Why did you do that?" Samantha asked Danny, who had managed to compose himself in the interim. "Why did you push her away when she tried to offer you her support?"

"The first time it was just instinctive. Our boss was in the room and although we hadn't been hiding our relationship, it's not like we'd been broadcasting it either. I knew that if she touched me, I would have broken down completely and I couldn't risk that. I needed to hold it together because I had to go and tell Rikki what had happened. I didn't want anyone else giving her the news. It was my duty to tell her."

"You felt responsible for her son's death?"

"Of course I felt goddamn responsible! He was in my care at the time. I know that what happened was just a horrible twist of fate, but I blamed myself, how could I not? If I'd never let him ride on ahead when he'd asked, just checked that he'd gotten home all right after the robbery… well, he might still be alive today."

"You can't know that," Samantha said. "It sounds like he bled out within minutes."

Danny nodded. "I know that now, but back then it was a different story. Look – I came to terms with my part in what happened to Ruben a long time ago. That's not what's under debate here. There will always be an irrational side of me that blames myself for his death, but I've accepted that my actions weren't the primary cause of it. In my head, I know that I couldn't have saved him, even if my heart wishes that by some miracle I could have done."

"So why didn't you allow Lindsay to be there for you? I understand the need not to show that kind of emotion in front of your superior, but what about after that?"

Danny sighed. "It wasn't a conscious thing, I swear. My life just became all about Rikki, about supporting her through her grief, about being there for her in any way I could."

"It was recompense then? A way of making up for what you felt was your part in a little boy's untimely death?"

Danny nodded. "Yes – I felt so helpless, so guilty, but being her shoulder to cry on was something that I could do to compensate. Between that, work, and managing my own grief… well, as much as I hate to admit it, Lindsay had to make do with the scraps that were left over. I didn't have the energy to offer her anything else."

"But didn't you feel guilty about conducting a sexual relationship with another woman, while your girlfriend waited patiently in the wings?" Samantha asked him.

"Whoa! Back up there a minute," Danny said, holding his palms up in objection. "I wasn't sleeping with Rikki. It was all perfectly innocent at that point." He looked beseechingly at Lindsay. "You do believe that, don't you?" he asked her.

Much to his relief, she nodded in the affirmative. "Yes, yes, I believe you."

"Why is that?" Samantha asked her.

"Because I knew," Lindsay told her. "As soon as it happened I knew." She glanced over at Danny. "The night of the fire at Stella's apartment block," she stated.

His eyes dark with guilt, he nodded his unnecessary confirmation and Lindsay's heart squeezed painfully inside her chest. "He couldn't look me in the eye," she explained, wringing her hands together in her lap as the unpleasant memories resurfaced with a vengence. "I knew straightaway that something was off. I don't think I allowed myself to speculate about what that was, but something had definitely changed. I'd been feeling lost and lonely without him for weeks, but that morning, I felt genuinely bereft." She bit back a sob. "I came to the realisation that I was totally in love with him on the same day that I had to accept that it was time for me to let him go."

She drew in a shaky breath and swiped at the tears welling in her eyes with the tips of her fingers. "But this isn't telling me anything I don't already know," she complained. "I want to know _why_ it happened. I need to understand why he chose her and not me, what she had that I didn't."

"Lindsay please," Danny implored. "It wasn't about that."

"So what was it about then?" she demanded. "I mean you said it was important to you to be there to support her and I get that, but what about your feelings for me, huh? Did I even figure in your thoughts at all, or was I just a convenient body to use when you needed to let off some steam?"

"We can't have had sex more than a couple of times during that time," he objected.

"I know but the few times we did, I never got the feeling that you truly wanted to be with me," was Lindsay's emotional response. "You didn't make love to me, Danny. It was sex. It was like you were just going through the motions for the sake of it."

She scraped shaking fingers through her hair, her eyes dark with pain. "So how do I know that you weren't wishing you were with her when you were in bed with me, huh? How do I know that, Danny? How?"

"It's a fair question," Samantha interjected when words temporarily failed him.

Although he knew he probably shouldn't be, Danny was genuinely shocked that Lindsay thought he'd been drawing unfavourable comparisons and hankering after Rikki while he was with her. It had never been about choosing one woman over the other for him, not once had the thought even entered his head. His reasons - if you could call them that - were much more emotionally complex than that.

"Look, let's get one thing straight, all right?" he said firmly. "That night with Rikki wasn't pre-meditated. It was a one-time deal and it had _nothing_ to do with love. It wasn't even all that much about sex either. It was just two people blindly taking comfort in each other as a way of copying with their shared grief. It was wrong; I know that, but it didn't feel that way at the time."

"It made you feel better so that made it okay?" Lindsay cut in bitterly.

"For a very short period in time, yeah, I guess I did feel like that," Danny admitted candidly, even though he knew it cast him in a bad light. "It felt as if Rikki was the only one who understood what I was going through."

"You didn't even feel guilty when you talked to me on the phone?" Lindsay demanded of him. "And don't give me any BS, Danny; I _know_ that you were with her when I spoke to you. I think that's what hurts the most in all of this – the way you brushed me off like I meant nothing. The way you turned it all around on me, like it was somehow my fault for wanting to be there for you when you hadn't asked me to."

Danny's face was clouded with disgust at his own unconscionable behaviour, but he did his best to explain. "I felt like I was being torn in two. It was easier to cut you off than admit to Rikki that we'd crossed over the line," he said. "That was cowardly and totally beneath me, but…"

He closed his eyes. "All I can say in my defence is that it was a state of mind that only lasted a few hours. Reality set in pretty damn quick after that. I had to face you at the Lab and the look on your face…" He broke off and shook his head. "I'd persuaded myself that Rikki's needs were greater, but in that moment…" He sighed. "Despite how it must seem, you meant something to me, Lindsay. I just hadn't allowed myself to admit it until then."

"Why was that do you think?" Samantha asked him.

"Why couldn't I admit that I needed her? That she wasn't just the next notch on the bedpost for me?" Danny shrugged. "I don't know – maybe I didn't feel like I deserved her, that she could do a whole lot better than someone like me. I was pretty down on myself at the time."

"So would you say that you subconsciously sabotaged your relationship with Lindsay to punish yourself for what happened to Ruben?"

"Well, that'd be a convenient excuse, wouldn't it?" Danny remarked caustically, "But that was part of it, yes. I pushed everyone that mattered to me away because I didn't want them to make me feel better. I didn't want to hear how it wasn't my fault; I wanted to drown in my own guilt because it was what I felt I deserved. And then because I'd cut myself off from my friends and the people who cared about me, Rikki was the only one I had to turn to. I built a glass-cage around the two of us and ended up getting trapped inside of it in the process."

"So what ultimately broke you free?" Samantha asked.

"Lindsay," was Danny's adamant reply. "You really want to know what she had that you didn't?" he asked his wife.

She nodded in trepidation, fearful of what he might say.

"She was Ruben's mother, but other than that, absolutely nothing," he told her resolutely. "Maybe I was distracted and distant with you, but that wasn't because I was thinking of her – or at least not in the way that you think anyway."

"But you still slept with her," Lindsay pointed out.

Danny nodded gravely. "Yes."

"Why?" she demanded.

He stared back at her helplessly. "I wish I knew; I really do. It's like it was someone else in my body that night not me. I suppose I've distanced myself from it because I hate what grief and guilt drove me to, but that's honestly how it feels to me now." He looked away from her steady and too-penetrating gaze, not knowing what else to say.

"How do you feel about that, Lindsay?" Samantha asked then.

"How am I supposed to feel?" she countered combatively.

"I don't know," Samantha returned calmly, "You tell me. Does it feel like he's making excuses for his infidelity?"

"In a way, yes, but that's only because he can't ever fully justify it. What he just said about it feeling like it was someone else that night? I can understand why he views it that way."

"You can?" Samantha said, somewhat surprised by this admission.

"Yes – because on some level it's true," Lindsay reluctantly acknowledged. "He's not the same man he was back then. He's changed, become more emotionally mature, I think. He's a more grounded person now."

"And yet while you freely recognise the difference in him, you still don't completely trust him, do you?"

Lindsay shook her head. "No, no, I suppose I don't."

"Why is that do you think?"

"Because he broke my heart, and risking it again is not an easy thing for me to do, especially as I've been burned that way before. And because it's not enough, I still feel like there are things that he hasn't told me."

"Like what?" Danny asked her.

"I want to know how it happened," she told him. "I want to know everything."

"You want diagrams? A computer simulation?"

The flippant remark was defensive and Danny regretted it the instant it left his mouth. Why was she so determined to rake over every detail though? Was she trying to guarantee them an appointment at the divorce courts? It felt like it sometimes.

Lindsay, somewhat amazingly, let the derisive comment pass. "Not the sex, Danny," she replied calmly, even though her heart was beating like a bass drum inside her chest, "What led to it."

He sighed. "She came over to the apartment that night, said she didn't want to be alone." He shrugged. "To be honest I wasn't relishing the idea of an evening in on my own either, so I guess I was grateful for her company. We had few drinks, something to eat, talked a little about general everyday stuff before the conversation inevitably turned to Ruben. Rikki started crying at one point and I put my arm around her to comfort her… and then it just sort of happened."

"What happened?"

He couldn't look at her. "We kissed."

"Who made the first move?" Lindsay asked intently, her eyes steady on his face. The answer to this particular question was suddenly vitally important to her, maybe it always had been. She hoped to god he told her the truth, because she'd know if he was lying to her and somehow that would be worse than him having been the initiator in the first place.

"I…"

Danny stopped and thought back on it. Blurred by the passage of time and his efforts to block it out, it was all something of a jumble inside his head. He closed his eyes, cast his mind back. He remembered Rikki's sobs lessening, her pulling away from him and looking up into his face with red, swollen eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. Their gazes had locked, held… and then she'd leaned forward and pressed her lips to his…

"She did," he confirmed and heard Lindsay let go of her breath with a whoosh.

"But you didn't push her away," she remarked, the relief fleeting and short-lived.

He remembered his first instinct had been to do just that, but then he'd tasted the salt of her tears, felt the wetness of them on her cheeks under his fingertips and he hadn't been able to bring himself to reject her. He hadn't meant for it to go so far, but once it had begun, it had quickly gotten out of control. Dragged under by the desperate need to connect with someone, anyone, he'd succumbed to her advances - and driven a stake right through the heart of the one person that truly mattered in the process.

"No," he admitted with a remorseful sigh. "No, I didn't."

"And did I even cross your mind?" Lindsay asked him in a small voice.

Somewhere in the back of his mind his conscience _had_ tugged, but he'd been too far gone to care at that point. His life was already in tatters, why not go the whole way and shred it into tiny pieces? It wasn't as if it could get any worse, could it? Little had he known just how much worse it could get.

He shook his head and winced at Lindsay's broken-hearted sob. He instinctively reached for her, but she shoved his hand away, making his heart plummet like a lead weight inside his chest. He deserved her anger, he knew that, but it ran like needles of ice through his veins all the same.

"God I'm sorry, I'm _so_ sorry," he burst out with fervent regret. "You've got to understand, that wasn't me! I was such a mess, I wasn't thinking straight, I felt so numb, almost dead inside. It wasn't that I didn't care about you; it was that I didn't care about myself. My needs didn't matter, what I owed Rikki for my failure to protect Ruben did. I'd blocked you out of my mind - out of my life - because that was the only way I could be there for her unconditionally. It's no excuse, it's no reason, but it's all the explanation I have."

"S-so what changed?" she asked him tremulously, his passionate desperation pulling her back from the brink.

"The bubble burst," he told her. "That speech you gave me about feeling like you'd lost your best friend? That was the turning point for me. It changed everything. I know I was acting like a real jerk that day, but that's only because I felt so horribly guilty. I guess I was subconsciously trying to drive you away too because it was easier to do that than accept what I'd done."

"Then I gave you what you wanted, didn't I?" Lindsay said bitterly.

Danny shook his head. "No, you gave me what I thought I wanted, but the things you said, the way you said them – so calm, so collected, but so heartbreakingly honest at the same time… It opened my eyes to how my inattention had affected you, made me realise exactly what I was throwing away. You said you'd fallen in love with me and my first reaction was one of elation, but then it crashed in on me just how badly I'd screwed everything up. Suddenly Rikki was no longer my primary concern, winning you back and doing everything I could to make up for the pain I'd caused you was all that mattered."

"So why didn't I deserve that respect in the first place?" Lindsay asked tearfully. "Why wasn't I good enough for you?"

"Oh baby, you were, I was just too messed up to know it. In my crazy mixed-up world, my feelings for you and my need to be there for Rikki were two completely separate things. It was only when they inevitably clashed that I had to make a choice, and that's when I realised there was no choice – it was you all along, always had been and always would be."

He shook his head. "Have you any idea how crap that made me feel? Knowing that I'd betrayed you for a woman who meant so little in the grand scheme of things?"

"No, tell me, tell me how it felt," Lindsay urged, unaware of the tears streaming down her cheeks. It hurt so much to hear this. There was nothing he could say that could take away what he'd done, but maybe the strength of his regret would allow her to forgive him and enable them to finally move on.

"Like I was something nasty that I'd scraped off the bottom of my shoe," Danny told her darkly. "I have _never _hated myself more than I did in that moment. I knew I didn't deserve a second chance, but I couldn't walk away. The thought of you thinking badly of me, of potentially having to watch you find happiness with someone else and knowing that it could have been me… I had to try to make it right. How could I do anything else?"

He reached out to take her hands in his and this time she didn't push him away. "I love you, Lindsay. It took me way too long to figure that out, but it doesn't make it any less of the truth. And I know I've said this before, but I'll say it again now - _nothing_ like that will ever happen again. It was a stupid, thoughtless mistake, but I learned my lesson, I swear to you."

"And what about Rikki?"

Danny frowned. "What about her?"

"What did you tell her? How did it end between the two of you?"

"I think we both knew that the situation had gotten out of hand," Danny said. "But to tell you the truth, I didn't handle it as I should have done. Instead of dealing with it, I did my best to avoid her. It wasn't too difficult between my work schedule and getting my life back on track. I was out a lot of the time – at work, at the gym, or out with the guys at a ballgame or something. When she did eventually corner me, I was doing a really bad job of trying to let her down gently when she told me she was leaving…" He sighed. "I guess I got let off easy, huh?"

"It's a good job I made you work so hard for that second chance then, isn't it?" Lindsay said harshly.

"You didn't dish out anything less than I deserved."

"True," she agreed with an incline of her head. "I need to know one more thing though."

Ignoring the sense of foreboding her words invoked, Danny nodded his head. "Okay, shoot."

"How did you feel about her?"

"About Rikki you mean?" Danny queried and then rubbed at the back of his neck. "You sure like asking difficult questions, don't you?" he said rhetorically.

He thought about it for a moment. "I cared about her," he replied carefully, "But it wasn't out of choice. It was more… I felt duty-bound towards her, I suppose. I may have given her my body, Linds, but she never had my heart. I don't look back and think 'what if?' I look back and think 'what the hell were you thinking?'"

Lindsay looked down at her hands twisted together in her lap. "I don't know what to say," she said. "It's all too much to take in right now."

"That's normal," Samantha said, speaking for the first time in a while. "Your feelings aren't just going to slot into place overnight. I suggest you take some time to sort through them properly. Consider things carefully, clarify anything you need to clarify, and then take it from there."

"You're making it sound like this is all hanging on my verdict," Lindsay said.

"Because it is in a way," Samantha said. "I think Danny's made it perfectly clear what he wants from this. He's asking you for your forgiveness…"

"And to work with me on rebuilding the trust between us," Danny interjected.

"So I guess the question is: can you give it to him?" Samantha concluded.

"What if I can't?" Lindsay asked her.

"Then I wouldn't necessarily say all is lost, but it's going to be a significantly more difficult road that the two of you are going to have to travel."

"So I have to find a way to forgive and forget is that it?"

Samantha shook her head. "Not forget," she said. "Forgive so that you can make a real effort to put the past behind you and move on."

Her gaze still downcast, Lindsay gnawed anxiously on her bottom lip, drained of all remaining energy and desperate for it to be over. She glanced up at the clock on the wall, searching for an escape route. "I guess that's our hour nearly up, huh?" she said, taking note of the time.

"You've a few minutes yet," Samantha said quietly. "Is there anything else you want to add?" she asked Danny.

"Just that I don't think this is the end of it," he said. "Maybe Lindsay's asked all the questions she needed to ask of me, but we've barely scratched the surface of what it was like for her, how she felt about it all."

Lindsay frowned. "Is that important?"

"It is to me, and I think it's important to us too."

"Why?"

"Because you didn't just react to the hurt I caused you, Lindsay," Danny said. "It re-opened some old wounds for you and they've put a blight on our relationship ever since. I'm not trying to absolve what I did, but I do feel that I should be judged for my own sins and not be sentenced for the sins of others. It was one of my five top issues, remember? For you to see me as me rather than view me through the shadows of your past relationships?"

"Does he have a point?" Samantha asked. "Have you judged him on previous boyfriend's actions as well as his own?"

Lindsay lowered her gaze. "I wish I could tell you no," she said, "But, in all honesty, I can't."

"Then it's important that we explore the reasons for that in our next session," Samantha told her. "Any decision you make should be based on this relationship and this man alone. It shouldn't be coloured by echoes of the past. You owe it to yourself, Danny and your little girl to make sure that's not the case."

Lindsay nodded. "I know."

"Good," Samantha said with a satisfied nod and then glanced down at her watch. "And on that note, I think it's time for us to wrap this up."

"Thank you," Danny said, pausing on his way out the door while Lindsay went on ahead. "I don't know what I was expecting, but that wasn't as bad as I thought."

"You were expecting a witch-hunt?" Samantha enquired knowingly.

He let out a short bark of laugher. "Yeah, I guess I was."

"I'm not here to judge, Danny. I'm here to help. You need to make your own peace with your actions, and you have to give Lindsay the space to make hers."

"Something tells me that's not gonna happen anytime soon," he said morosely.

"Just give her time. This was always going to set you back a few paces, but try not to let it drag you down. It's important to stay positive. There are no guarantees obviously, but she handled that as well as could be expected under the circumstances. She promised to be open-minded and she managed it for the most part."

"I know."

"Despite that, it's still going to re-ignite all those long-buried emotions for her. You're in for a rough ride, I think, but if you can get through the worst of it, you'll come out the other end with a stronger foundation on which to build on."

Danny nodded. "I should go," he said, looking anxiously over his shoulder.

He could see Lindsay heading determinedly for the elevator. She clearly had no intention of waiting for him, but he couldn't just let her leave. He caught up with her just as she pushed the button to go down, darting in through the closing doors with an agility born from years of chasing down fleeing suspects. They stood side-by-side in silence during the descent to the ground floor, neither knowing what to say now that they'd finally confronted the dark cloud that had hung over them for far too many years.

"You wanna take a walk through Central Park or something?" Danny asked hesitantly, breaking the stalemate as they emerged from the high-rise building onto the busy sidewalk outside.

"Lindsay?" he prompted when she didn't immediately reply.

She turned to look at him, a world of pain evident in her rich brown eyes. "I can't right now, Danny. I just… I need to be alone. I need you to go."

He thought his heart was going to break in two, but he couldn't deny her request. "Okay just call me… umm… when you're ready to talk. Just…"

He broke off as he lost the ability to speak. His head bowed, his eyes brimming with emotion, he turned away; forcing himself to leave when all he wanted to do was fall on his knees and beg her to forgive him.

Lindsay stood like a statue and watched him go, and then turned and walked in the opposite direction, her mind numb and her heart aching. Some how, some way, she managed to make it home without breaking, but the minute she crossed over the threshold and pushed the door shut behind her, the floodgates opened. Staggering to her room, she curled up into a ball on top of the bed, and sobbed her heart out until she thought she'd never be able to stop…

_**To be**__** continued…**_

_**A/N2: **__Phew! That was a tough one. As Danny said, there was nothing he could say that could make it better so he was always going to come off looking bad in this chapter. I struggled with that for a while, but finally accepted it. Ultimately, this story is about redemption and you can't have that without the initial downfall. I forced myself to re-watch the 'Right Next Door' episode while writing this too and several things struck me: _

_- At his apartment, __Danny couldn't get Lindsay off the phone fast enough, like if he had to continue talking to her he wouldn't be able to pretend any longer… _

_- He couldn't look her in the eye when he got to the Lab_

_- He was deliberately provoking a fight at the beginning of the 'I've fallen in love with you' scene, and_

_- The 'what have I done?' look __of regret on his face afterwards. He was expecting her to tear strips off him, but what he got was an understanding for what he'd been going through, and an honest expression of her feelings for him. _

_All right __so the first one is probably wishful thinking on my part, but the other three moments really resonated with me so I've tried to weave them into the narrative of this chapter._

_Anyway, I guess that's all I have to say for the moment so till next time then…__CharmedBec x_


	31. Double Jeopardy

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes****: **Hey! New chapter for you all. A day later than originally planned, but at least it's up this weekend. Anyway, I'll leave you to read on…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 31 – Double Jeopardy**_

_**Friday evening, 7**__**.45 PM…**_

Around a block from Stella's apartment building, Lindsay felt her footsteps begin to drag as she subconsciously attempted to stave off the inevitable. She'd successfully avoided Danny in the three days since their therapy session, but she couldn't steer clear of him tonight.

As promised, she'd worked his shift for him today so that he could spend some quality time with Lucy. However, with Stella still at work and their regular babysitter out on a date, he'd been the only one available to watch over their daughter until she got home. He could have had Lucy to stay over at his place of course, but as he had to be at work at eight the following morning, logistically it made more sense for him to put the little girl to bed at Stella's and stick around until Lindsay arrived home from her shift.

She hadn't the faintest clue what she was going to say to him. Since Tuesday, their only contact had been a couple of brief phone-calls to finalise arrangements for their daughter's care. She wanted to scream and rage at him, but had forcibly bitten her lip to contain her anger, making their conversations more than a little strained as a result.

It wasn't supposed to hurt this much; that was her abiding mantra. Danny's infidelity was years in the past now, and yet she was reliving the agony of it as if it had occurred only yesterday. By some unknown feat of personal strength, she'd managed to hold it together during their therapy session, getting through the painful conversation with astonishing composure. Unfortunately, it had all unravelled on her once she'd arrived home. After her extended crying jag had finally petered out, she'd lain on her bed in a stunned stupor before eventually succumbing to emotional exhaustion and drifting off into a restless sleep.

She'd woken up from her nap a few hours later, feeling groggy, out-of-sorts and with the weight of the world resting on her slender shoulders. Images of her husband entwined around Rikki Sandoval assailed her from every angle until her breath was stolen from her lungs and the pain of it made her almost physically sick. How she'd gotten through the next few days without coming apart at the seams she didn't know, but somehow she'd managed to survive the week intact, even if her fragile heart did feel like it was being held together by nothing more than a couple of pieces of string.

She was dreading having to talk things out with Danny, but she knew that continuing to avoid him wasn't doing either of them any good. It wasn't fair to leave him hanging in this way, plus the continued uncertainty was playing havoc with her own mental health too. She could feel the black clouds of her depression beginning to descend once again, when for the previous few weeks, they'd gradually begun to lift.

Thankfully, her therapy session with Simone yesterday had started to put things into better perspective for her. She simply had to keep in mind what her therapist had advised her. No major decisions while her emotions were still raw, and to make sure that she listened properly to whatever Danny had to say rather than putting words into his mouth before he spoke them…

_**The previous **__**afternoon…**_

"You seem tense," Simone observed, sitting back in her chair as Lindsay lost focus for the second time since the start of their session ten minutes previously.

"I'm sorry… I just… I've got a lot on my mind at the moment."

Simone nodded in quiet understanding. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.

"No," Lindsay immediately responded and then stalled, unconsciously gnawing on the pad of her thumb to contain her anxiety. "This isn't what we had planned for this session," she pointed out.

"True," Simone agreed with an incline of her head, "But I'm adaptable if the occasion demands it and I think perhaps this one does."

Lindsay sighed. "It's Danny," she confessed.

Simone nodded sagely. "I figured as much."

"Things have been… well, difficult since our last counselling session," Lindsay began to explain and then broke off, her forehead creasing into a slight frown. "Shouldn't I be working through this in couple's therapy with him rather than here with you though?" she asked worriedly.

"If it helps you to sort things out in your own mind before your next counselling session then I don't see any harm," Simone reassured her. "You're obviously having trouble getting to grips with whatever Tuesday's session uncovered."

Lindsay nodded. "We talked about Rikki Sandoval," she told her therapist.

Simone's brow furrowed. "Rikki Sandoval?" she enquired, not understanding the significance of the name.

Lindsay shot her a surprised look. "Danny said he'd told you about her."

"No." Simone started to shake her head, and then back-tracked as the proverbial light-bulb went on inside her head. "Oh you mean the woman he…umm…"

"Slept with behind my back?" Lindsay filled in for her. "Yeah, I mean her."

Simone nodded, taking note of the bitter emphasis on the word 'her.' "He never mentioned her name to me," she remarked mildly.

Lindsay's eyes filled involuntarily, her lower lip trembling with emotion. "It feels like he's cheated on me all over again," she said shakily. "I don't remember it hurting this bad before."

"Of course it didn't," Simone told her gently. "The two of you have a lot more history now so it's bound to cut deeper. What you need to bear in mind is that this happened years ago - the man you married didn't cheat on you, the guy you were dating at the time did. It doesn't make it okay, but you need to try to put your feelings into perspective."

"I wish I could, but that's easier said than done at the moment."

"Why?" Simone asked. "Did Danny give you the impression that he didn't think it was such a big deal anymore? Is that why you're finding it so hard to come to terms with?"

Lindsay shook her head. "No, no, it's just… I don't know what I was expecting him to say…"

"But it wasn't what he did?" Simone filled in for her.

"I've imagined us having that conversation so many times over the years," Lindsay continued. "I thought I'd gone through every possible scenario in my head, but the reality didn't match up to any of them."

Simone nodded. "So perhaps we should start with what you were expecting then?"

Lindsay shrugged. "I don't know, I guess I thought there'd be more to it. I met her a couple of times, you know. Not to speak to, but in passing when I was staying over at Danny's. She lived down the hall from him."

"Which meant you had pre-conceived notions of what the attraction was I take it?" Simone shrewdly surmised.

Lindsay shrugged noncommittally. "The enduring image I have of her is Soccer Mom chic with the body of a burlesque dancer."

"Ahh sex _and_ nurture," Simone commented dryly. "Everything a man could want in a woman, huh?"

Lindsay nodded. "Exactly," she concurred. "So now every time I close my eyes, all I see is the two of them wrapped around each other, all hot and sweaty and overwhelmed with passion…"

"And you feel that you don't measure up in comparison?"

"Is that crazy?" Lindsay said. "I mean, he did choose me when all was said and done, didn't he? So I shouldn't be feeling that way, should I?"

"There is no should or shouldn't in this, Lindsay," Simone told her. "You feel what you feel, and it's a perfectly natural for you to question your own attractiveness under the circumstances."

"I just wish I could get these horrible images out of my head," Lindsay complained. "I have this recurring nightmare of him making love to me, telling me how gorgeous I am, how much he loves me, but then it's like I'm suddenly looking out through his eyes, and he's gazing down at my body on the bed beneath him and all he's seeing is her – all voluptuous curves and Jessica Rabbit sexiness."

Simone nodded without comment. "Tell me something," she said. "What reason did Danny give for his infidelity?"

Lindsay shot her a confused look. "How do you mean?"

"Well, I don't like to pigeon-hole people," Simone continued, "But there are three main reasons why people cheat. One - for the sex, the thrill of the forbidden. Two – as a non-too-subtle way of expressing dissatisfaction with a current partner. Or three – in response to some kind of emotional trauma, a kind of 'acting out' if you will. Which category would you say Danny fell into?"

"The last one," Lindsay answered without really having to think about it.

"So why are you so focused on the first two?" Simone enquired incisively.

"I'm not," Lindsay swiftly denied, and then was forced to recant when she realised that wasn't strictly the case. "I… I don't know."

"Has Danny ever told you he doesn't find you as attractive as any of his previous girlfriends?" Simone asked. "Or that you lack the sex appeal of this Rikki?"

Lindsay shook her head, her expression thoughtful. "No, he… he said it wasn't about the sex. He said it was more a comfort thing than anything else."

"But you don't believe him?"

"Yes, I believe him, I just…" Lindsay sighed. "I guess I find it hard to accept that's all there was to it. I don't think he's lying to me as such, more that he's deliberately leaving something out."

"Is that to spare your feelings or to absolve his own guilt, do you think?" Simone asked her.

Lindsay took a moment to consider. "The former more than the latter," she eventually concluded. "He's not the kind to shirk his responsibilities. In fact, a lot of the time he takes on too much of the blame for things. His relationship with Rikki Sandoval was a classic example of that."

Simone nodded. "When Danny told me about this, he said he was going through a rough time personally. That his neighbour's kid had been accidentally shot and killed while he'd been looking after him and that he'd struggled to come to terms with that. He told me that he'd pushed you away, that it was fairly early on in your relationship and that he didn't really know how to talk to you about what he was going through. What I don't know is where this Rikki comes into it. He just told me he'd slept with someone else while he'd been in self-destruct mode."

"She was Ruben's Mom," Lindsay explained. "It was her son that was killed."

"So it was an act of guilt on Danny's part then? A way of lessening her suffering?"

"I suppose you could say that, yeah," Lindsay said, "But that doesn't make it right, does it? I know he's your friend and everything, but you can't defend him on this. He had sex with someone else when he was supposed to be with me. I don't care that her son died, that's no excuse. He was _my_ boyfriend and she had no right. It's like one day he was there and the next he was gone. I didn't understand what I'd done wrong."

"So how did the two of you eventually work things out?" Simone enquired.

Lindsay blinked, a little perturbed by the change in subject. "We didn't," she answered, "Not at first anyway. The whole situation was tearing me apart so I broke things off. But Danny wouldn't let it go - he went from being barely present in my life, to suddenly wanting to become a bigger part of it. He said that he missed me, that he was sorry and that he wanted to give our relationship another go. Eventually he managed to worm his way through my defences and I gave in."

"Is that really how you see it?" Simone asked her, "As a victory that you conceded, rather than an amicable settlement that the two of you reached together?"

Lindsay hesitated before replying. "I… I believed he was sincere at the time," she said slowly.

"But you don't anymore?"

Lindsay shrugged her shoulders evasively, her gaze downcast.

Simone sighed at her reticence. "I'm not trying to defend what he did, Lindsay," she assured her. "I'm just trying to help you work through why you chose to give him a second chance first time around. You could describe the current situation you're in as double jeopardy in a way…"

"You think I'm punishing him for the same crime twice?" Lindsay wanted to know.

Simone shook her head. "No, but whether you like it or not, you are putting him on trial for the same crime twice."

"And I acquitted him last time so why not this time is that what you're saying?"

Simone pursed her lips at her patient's decidedly belligerent tone of voice. "No, so that you can decide whether or not you feel you made the right choice," she said matter-of-factly. "I was under the impression that you wanted your marriage to work."

Suitably chastised, Lindsay heaved out a deep sigh. "I do."

"Then however unpleasant this is for you, you're going to have to battle your way through it," Simone told her. "You're only going to make yourself and Danny miserable if you once again fail to address this properly."

Knowing that she was right but not wanting to admit it, Lindsay looked away, her eyes glazed with misery and regret.

"I want you to do something for me, okay?" Simone urged gently. "Look deep into your heart and tell me whether you truly believe that you made the wrong decision in taking Danny back. Don't over think it; just tell me whether the original choice you made was the right one or not."

It took Lindsay less than a second to reach a conclusion. "If I had to go back and do it all again, I'd make the same choice," she admitted.

"And what does that tell you?" Simone said.

It all crashed in on Lindsay then and she promptly burst into tears. Reaching behind her for a box of tissues to mop up the flood of tears, Simone calmly let her cry it out. Once the storm of emotion had passed, she waited patiently while Lindsay composed herself.

"Good to know, huh?" she commented lightly when the young CSI finally choked back the last of her tears.

Lindsay couldn't prevent the ripple of almost hysterical laughter that broke free in response. "That's something of an understatement," she remarked with a wan smile.

"Well I'm glad you think so," Simone replied.

"I _do_ love him," Lindsay reiterated, almost as if she needed to say it to assure herself.

Simone nodded solemnly. "I can see that."

"I just… I don't know how to set all this aside," she said tearfully, crossing her hands over her aching heart to emphasise her point.

"So go with the alternative option," Simone advised. "Let some of the anger and hurt that you feel out rather than keeping it bottled up inside. It would do you the world of good to finally let it go, and it wouldn't hurt Danny to witness it either."

"But what if it tears us apart again?" Lindsay asked.

"Isn't not facing it having the same effect?" Simone rejoined. She leaned forward and placed her hand over Lindsay's. "Honey look, as much as I love Danny as a person – he _is_ a man after all, and – god bless them – they are not mind-readers, however much we might wish they were. In my experience, they need these things spelled out to them in black and white. He's never going to truly understand the depth of the hurt you feel if you don't let him see it."

"No, no, I don't suppose he is," Lindsay reluctantly acknowledged.

"So why have you held back, do you think?" Simone asked. "Why is it that you've never confronted him over this?"

"Because I was scared to," Lindsay admitted a little shamefacedly. "Things were so fragile between us, and he was trying so hard to make it right and…" She closed her eyes as the emotions overwhelmed her. "I wanted it to work so much, and I was afraid that if I rocked the boat… I was afraid… I was afraid of history repeating itself," she eventually confessed, opening her eyes to meet Simone's gaze.

"You were worried that he'd cheat on you again?"

"No!" Lindsay shook her head, and then sucked in a shaky breath. "My first serious boyfriend, Mark – he cheated on me," she explained in an almost conversational tone. "I was only nineteen and college had been a new start for me after my friends' murders. Mark was my hope, and my hope had been snatched away from me."

"But I could have gotten through it," she went on. "I could have moved on. I was young, he was young… I could have chalked it down to experience and not let it unduly affect me."

"So why didn't you?" Simone asked her.

"I guess because of Simon," Lindsay answered.

"Simon?" her therapist enquired with a quizzical look.

"My only other long-term relationship besides Danny and Mark," Lindsay clarified for her. "I was older then – a qualified CSI and no longer a scared kid… but…he…he…"

"He cheated on you too?"

Lindsay shook her head. "Not exactly, no, but when I called him on the way he'd been treating me, he…umm…" She covered her face with her cupped hands as the tears began to flow again.

"I just couldn't bear the thought of Danny reacting in the same way," she said between hiccupping sobs. "I know that I should have confronted him over Rikki, but I was hanging on by a thread by then. I wanted it to work _so_ much so I placed my trust in the man I believed him to be."

"Except you didn't, did you?" Simone pointed out, "Not completely anyway. You trusted him on one level, but you were still expecting him to hurt you on another."

Lindsay nodded. "I guess I was," she admitted. "It didn't seem that way at the time though. I just thought I was being sensibly cautious."

"And what about now? Are you still afraid of him reacting like your ex-boyfriend if you stand up for yourself?"

"I suppose," Lindsay said with a slight shrug, "And I know that's totally irrational. I mean I know Danny, you know? I know the kind of man he is, and I couldn't imagine him ever being that cruel to anybody – let alone someone he cared about. But I think that's what makes it worse in a way. I know he'll never say it, but how do I know he'll never think it?"

"Think what Lindsay?" Simone asked her then. "What is it that you're so afraid of?"

_**Back in the present…**_

And that was what it all came down to in the end; Lindsay mused as she stepped out of the elevator and made her way down the corridor towards Stella's apartment - her fear of being made to feel completely unworthy of any kind of love. It had cut her off at the knees at the time, and to hear the same thing from her husband now… He had the power to break her completely. If she handed him that ticking time-bomb, what would she do if he ever decided to light the fuse?

So she chose to avoid. It was better to remain ignorant than hear the worst. That had been her philosophy in life for so long now; it was incredibly hard to let it go. She wasn't quite ready yet to be honest, but she did feel strong enough to heed Simone's advice and let Danny see at least some of the pain that she'd endured over his unthinking betrayal. Maybe his reaction to that would finally give her the courage to take it one step further.

Well it was now or never, she thought somewhat fatalistically as she reached the apartment door and searched in her purse for her keys. Pausing in the act of inserting them into the lock, she drew in a deep breath, and then pushed open the door and went on through into the lion's den.

The living room was in semi-darkness when she entered, the TV flickering to itself in the corner, confusedly with the sound muted. As he heard the door close behind her, Danny scrambled to his feet with a startled oath. "Oh – hey," he said awkwardly. "I wasn't expecting you back yet."

She couldn't see his face properly in the gloom, but his voice sounded thick as if he was struggling to contain his emotions.

"Did you and Lucy have a good day?" she asked, inwardly cursing herself for indulging in banal small-talk when there were more important things to discuss.

"Yeah, yeah, it was good," Danny replied, his voice sounding steadier now that the shock of her unexpected homecoming had worn off.

"Lucy asleep?" Lindsay asked, sticking with the small-talk despite the tension sizzling in the air between them.

"Yeah," he told her. "She went out like a light halfway through her bedtime story. I don't think she'll be stirring again till morning."

Lindsay nodded. "I'll just go in and kiss her goodnight then," she said, hating herself for the relief she felt at escaping his presence.

Pushing open the door to Lucy's room, she crossed to sit on the floor by the bed. Her baby was a picture of innocence in repose, even though she could be a little mischief-maker while awake. Reaching out to brush a wisp of the little girl's flyaway hair off her forehead, Lindsay bent to kiss her rounded cheek, savouring the sweet, warm scent of her baby-soft skin as she did so.

She had never expected to love her child quite so much. It had seemed so unreal when she'd been pregnant, but the moment her new-born daughter had been placed in her arms, she'd been swamped by a wave of instantaneous and overwhelming love. Because of that, if anyone was going to give her the strength to confront the obstacles in her path, it was her beautiful baby girl. She would do it for Lucy because it was what she deserved, and because she would face anything if it guaranteed her baby's future happiness.

She would do it for herself too though, because, despite everything, she loved Danny with all her heart. She did not believe she'd made the wrong choice in taking him back. He'd made her happier than she'd ever been in her entire life, they'd just lost their way somewhere along the line. This was the man that she wanted to be with. She couldn't imagine being with anyone else. Maybe that's why she found the fact that he apparently could so difficult to deal with. For her, it was him or no-one. For Danny, it was her, or whoever was handy at the time it seemed.

She shook her head to erase that thought. Yes, he'd moved on with Rachel after they'd split, allowed himself to get embroiled in Rikki Sandoval's trauma before then, but it wasn't like he went out cruising for action like some men did. She had to make him understand just how much he'd hurt her. She needed him to recognize how his unthinking actions had compounded her already low self-esteem. But she couldn't do that sitting here by her daughter's bed, could she? She had to get back in there and talk to her husband before it was too late.

Rising to her feet, she leaned over and dimmed Lucy's nightlight, and then went back into the living room, only to find Danny buckling up his back-pack and making preparations to leave. Sensing her presence behind him, he turned towards her, allowing her to see his face properly for the first time in three days. Deep bruises stained the delicate skin under his eyes, while his brow was furrowed with lines of tension. His blue eyes were slightly red-rimmed and held a look of defeated sadness in them, stealing the words from her lips just as she opened them to speak.

"Umm, I guess I'll leave you to it then," Danny said when the awkward silence stretched beyond the point of endurance.

When Lindsay still failed to respond, he let out a resigned sigh, hooked his back-pack over his shoulder and strode purposefully towards the door, wanting to get out of there as soon as possible.

"Danny wait!"

Lindsay caught up with him just as he reached the door. "Stay," she urged, her left hand tightly gripping his arm to hold him back.

"Why?" he asked harshly, the question stark in its meaning.

"Because I love you," she told him simply. "I'm angry at you for hurting me - but I love you and that's what matters in the end."

Danny shifted uncomfortably on his sneaker-clad feet, not looking overly convinced by her assurances.

"I love you," Lindsay repeated, reaching up to touch his grizzled cheek as if to validate her claim in actions as well as words.

He reached up and caught her fingers in his, turning his face to press his lips to her palm. "You scared the hell outta me," he told her, his voice gruff with emotion.

"I know," she acknowledged. "I needed some time to process everything, get things straight in my head." She sighed. "We need to talk."

Danny nodded in agreement. "Now?" he enquired.

"Now," Lindsay confirmed with a nod. "The counselling is important, but we've got to learn how to do this by ourselves too. We can't hold off talking about things until Samantha's around to referee."

Danny lifted his eyebrows at that and Lindsay's lips curled into a self-deprecating smile in response. "All right so I guess I have been doing that," she accepted, "But I've gotten over it now. Simone said… well, she said that I ought to get some of what I've been feeling out of my system. It's just that it isn't going to be very pleasant when I do."

"I'm aware of that," Danny said calmly.

"Part of me really wants to key that beloved Harley of yours right now," she warned him.

Danny's mouth quirked at the uncharacteristic fierceness in her tone. "Babe, just as long as you weren't planning on taking a knife to the crown jewels, I'm cool," he quipped.

Lindsay thumped him lightly on the chest. "It's not funny," she said, even though a bubble of laughter was threatening to escape. She could help it; he was just so outrageous sometimes.

"I know," Danny said, his tone more serious, "But a little levity now and then isn't going to hurt any, is it?"

"I guess not," Lindsay said, "Just as long as it's not a way of deflecting the more difficult emotions," she added.

"It's not, I promise," Danny assured her, and then ran his fingers agitatedly through his short crop of dark-blonde hair. "Well maybe a little," he admitted.

Lindsay nodded. "I'm just going to make myself a sandwich or something," she told him, "And then we can talk, okay?"

"There's some left-over lasagne in the refrigerator if you want some," Danny said as he followed her through into the kitchen. "I cooked it up for me an' Luce earlier."

By tacit agreement, they talked about his day with Lucy and the progress of the 'See-No-Evil' case whilst Lindsay ate her meal.

"Thanks for covering my shift for me," Danny said as she systematically demolished the last few mouthfuls of her dinner. "You were right; it did help me to switch off from the case. And I've really missed spending time with Lucy - even if she can be a little monkey sometimes," he added with a grin.

"She play you up today?" Lindsay asked him.

Danny shook his head. "Nah, not really. I think she was just overexcited that's all."

"She's missed you," Lindsay told him. "She's used to seeing you several times a week and it's difficult for her when she doesn't."

Danny frowned. "It's hard to find the right balance when work is like it is. I mean it's not like she gets to see me in the morning at breakfast like she would if…"

"We were still living together as a family?" Lindsay interjected as she took her empty plate to the sink to wash.

"That wasn't meant to be a criticism," Danny assured her.

"I know," Lindsay returned, "But it is reality, isn't it? So it's lucky for Lucy that we're working on remedying that, right?"

"You still want that?" Danny asked her sombrely.

She looked at him steadily. "You're worried that I don't?" she returned.

"With the way things have been over the past few days, it has crossed my mind, yeah."

Lindsay sighed. "It just stirred everything up for me again, and I wasn't completely prepared for that. I suppose I thought that, with all the water that's passed under the bridge, I could be more pragmatic about it, but that's not really been the case. It hurts, Danny, it hurts like it did before and that's a lot to take in. It's made me re-question some of my earlier decisions."

"Like what?"

"I knew you weren't necessarily the settling-down type when we got together," she told him, "But I trusted you not to hurt me. I believed in my heart that you'd always be straight with me and you let me down on that. I mean if you'd told me you needed to take a break from us so that you could get your head together, I would have understood. I wouldn't have liked it, but I would have understood. Why didn't you just tell me that, Danny? Why? Why did you have to take the path that you did? Don't you understand how crushing it is to know that you can so easily sleep with someone else and not even spare me a second thought when you do?"

"It wasn't about you, Lindsay."

"It was to me! You think I just hopped into bed with you on a whim? I wouldn't have gone through with it if it hadn't meant something. If sex means so little to you, how do I know that I wasn't just another easy conquest for you?"

"Trust me, babe, you were anything but easy," Danny remarked defensively.

Lindsay's expression darkened with anger. "Don't be so goddamn facetious! This isn't a joke! I gave myself heart and soul to you, and you just spat in my face."

"Don't! Don't think that!"

Danny rose to his feet and came towards her, but she backed away holding her hands up to ward him off.

"She was so sexy," she rambled emotionally, "And Rachel… Rachel is so classically beautiful and I'm just…"

"The only woman I've ever truly loved," Danny insisted.

"So why wasn't I good enough then?" she shot back.

"Jesus Lindsay!" Danny exclaimed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger in agitation. "I wish I had an answer that will satisfy you, but I don't think that's even possible. Rikki was a mistake – a huge mistake, and Rachel… getting involved with her wasn't any reflection of my feelings for you. I just don't look it that way. I don't make comparisons. And I certainly don't view you as lacking."

"You made me feel that way though," Lindsay sniffed, swiping at the tears running down her cheeks. "You forgot my birthday – maybe you didn't think that that was such a big deal but it was to me. It's not like I needed a present or huge romantic gesture or anything, but I expected to at least be in your thoughts. You didn't have any trouble remembering the two birthdays I had before we got together, forgetting the first one since we'd become more than friends said it all."

Danny shook his head. "I don't know what you want me to say. I'm sorry, I really am. I was in a bad place at the time, and I just wasn't thinking straight. And you… well, you mean so much more to me now."

"Meaning I didn't mean much back then?"

"Of course you did," Danny told her, "But it's not even close to what I feel for you now. I was enjoying being in the moment, but I wasn't looking forward towards the future. When we got back together afterwards, _that's_ when I truly committed to the possibility of a life with you."

"And yet you still slept with Rachel," Lindsay remarked bitterly.

Danny's eyes flashed. "Don't give me that, Lindsay," he snapped. "You broke my heart. If I'd gotten involved with her weeks after we'd split then fair enough, but it was months… and yes, maybe I subconsciously used her to make me feel better about myself, but that was more about my own inadequacies than yours."

"You turn to anyone _but_ me, Danny, that's the point," Lindsay told him.

"And I'm working on that, aren't I?" he shot back irritably. "And it's not as if you were exactly approachable at the time…"

He paused to re-align his thoughts. "Look, I'm not saying you don't have a right to be angry or hurt," he said, "But it's like you're expecting me to somehow erase the past and I can't do that. Not to mention the fact that you seem to think there was some kind of nefarious intent behind my actions, which isn't even close to the truth. Yes, I messed up big time, but I didn't deliberately set out to hurt you. What is it that makes you think that I did?"

"I don't think that," Lindsay denied.

"Well, you sure act like you do," Danny said with a derisive snort. "I did something that hurt you badly, I'm not refuting that. But there are only so many times I can apologise for it before it starts to become meaningless. At some point, you're going to have to accept it or we're never going to be able to move on. Can't you see that?"

"You expect me to just get over it?" Lindsay demanded mulishly. "You think it's that easy?"

"No," Danny replied just as stubbornly. "That's not what I'm saying. I know it's going to take work to rebuild the trust. I accept that I have a lot of making up to do and that I need to understand more about how all this affected you personally. But, on the flip side, you've got to stop looking at me as if you're waiting for me to drive a stake through your heart or something. Do you really think that badly of me? Do you honestly believe I'm that much of a heartless bastard?"

The starkness of the questions temporarily robbed Lindsay of speech and she just stared back at him, unable to formulate any kind of answer.

Danny shook his head in despair. "Then I suppose the real question is – can you ever bring yourself to forgive me and work with me on moving forward? Or are we just going to keep coming back to this, going round and round in endless circles until it tears us both apart?"

"I don't know, okay?" Lindsay burst out in frustration. "I don't know! It's not as simple as you make it sound. There is so much more to it than that. You just don't understand."

"So _make_ me understand," Danny urged strongly, reaching out to take both her hands in his. "It's like you keep asking me these questions, but they're always the wrong ones. Can't you see how that makes it virtually impossible for me to give you the right answers?" he said, his voice filled with anguish.

"I don't mean to," she told him. "I don't, I swear."

"So explain it to me then. Please just explain it to me. Because right now I have no idea what it is you want from me, and until I figure that out, we never gonna get past this, are we?"

"Danny," she said imploringly. "I don't know whether I'm strong enough for this. Can't we just…"

"No," he cut in obstinately. "No. You owe me this. You owe both of us this. I know it's hard, but you have to get it out there."

"Or what? You'll walk away, is that it?"

"If you force me into it then I'm going to have to consider it, yeah. Because I can't live with this hanging over my head anymore, Linds, it's killing me. I'm sorry that I hurt you, I really am, but I feel like I'm serving a life sentence here. How many more times do I have to say I'm sorry before you finally believe me?"

"I _do_ believe you."

"So why the hell are we still stuck in this goddamn loop then, huh? Why?"

"Because I don't want you to make me feel like _he_ made me feel, okay? I couldn't take it, Danny, I just couldn't!"

"How who made you feel, babe?" Danny asked, his tone gentler now that he seemed to have finally broken through her wall.

"Please don't make me do this," she pleaded, making his heart squeeze in sympathy for her.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," he said, "But I think you have to. I don't want to cause you any more pain, but I need to know, okay? Tell me what you're so afraid of and maybe then I can do something about setting your mind at rest. You want that, don't you?"

Lindsay nodded. "Yes," she said in a tiny voice.

"So tell me who it is we're talking about here."

Lindsay closed her eyes as she felt herself falling over the edge into the abyss. "Simon," she said, eventually managing to force the name past the lump in her throat. "We're talking about Simon…"

_**To be**__** continued…**_

_A/N2: I'm not letting Danny completely off the hook just yet, I promise, but __we need to get all of Lindsay's issues out in the open first… _

_Till next time then… CharmedBec x_


	32. Flying Blind

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes****: **Hey! Another update for you. Sorry about the long wait - my muse has been on a bit of a go-slow over the past few weeks. I'm still not 100% happy with this chapter, but it's been agonised over long enough and I think I'm just going round in circles with it now. Apologies if it's a little bit disjointed in places.

Just as a warning: there are some fairly dark and adult themes in this (which I guess is the reason it's been so difficult to get right). I would say some of it is at the very top of the story's rating so please be aware of that.

Anyway, that said; let's get on with the show…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 32 – Flying Blind**_

"Whoa!" Don Flack remarked with a low whistle as he watched Danny attack the swinging punch-bag with the ferocity of a bull that had just scented fresh blood. "What low-life scumbag ticked you off, huh?"

Danny didn't answer. With his blue eyes narrowed in concentration and the exertion dampening the blue material of his NYPD t-shirt to almost black, he continued to jab his taped-up fists into the smooth leather, working off some of the suppressed rage that burned like acid in his stomach. When he was eventually forced to stop and catch his breath, he bent over double at the waist, bracing his hands against his knees as he sucked much-needed air into his oxygen-starved lungs.

When he straightened up again, Flack tossed him a towel to mop up the rivulets of sweat running down his brow, and then went to get them both a drink of water from the nearby dispenser. Gratefully taking the polystyrene cup from his friend's outstretched hand, Danny drained the cool liquid in a matter of seconds before returning for a refill. After gulping down another refreshing mouthful, he unceremoniously dumped the rest over his head in an attempt to cool off, shaking the excess droplets free from his short, spiky hair like a dog just emerging from a bath.

"So are you going to tell me what's got you so riled up, or do I have to guess?" Flack asked as they both selected a pair of free weights from a nearby rack, and began to run through a series of toning exercises aimed at building their upper body strength.

"Ever come to the conclusion that - even though you already knew you'd behaved like a complete ass - you were an even bigger one than you originally thought?" Danny enquired through rhythmic puffs of breath as he focused on a set of punishing arm-curls.

"Can't say that I have," Flack returned breezily and then grinned. "Which of course is utter baloney, but a man's gotta hold onto some pride, right?"

"A bigger man has the guts to admit his mistakes," Danny told his friend condescendingly, before lowering his weights and letting loose with a deep sigh of regret. "I just wish I'd made more of an effort to learn about Lindsay's past before things got so bad between us," he remarked sorrowfully. "I would have been a whole lot more sensitive to her insecurities if I'd known the truth."

"Yeah well unless you're Superman, you can't turn back time, so I guess you'll just have to be more sensitive to them in the future, won't you?" Flack said, grimacing a little as he painstakingly worked the backs of his arms.

"Mmm," Danny mused noncommittally, sitting down on a padded workbench and setting the heavy dumbbells he was holding to one side, his mind on his marital issues rather than his exercise regime.

"So Linds is talking to you again then?" Don asked after a beat.

Danny nodded solemnly. "I think she just needed some time to come to terms with everything. Talking about Rikki stirred up a lot of past hurt for her – I think more than she was expecting."

"So I'm guessing she's pretty pissed at you, huh?"

"She was," Danny replied; his thoughtful gaze focused on an invisible point in the middle distance. "Probably still is in fact, but you know what?" He turned his head to look his friend directly in the eye. "I think I'm actually kind of glad about that."

"You are?" Flack enquired with an incredulously raised eyebrow.

"Definitely," Danny reiterated with a decisive nod.

"Why?" Don asked.

"Because she never got angry," he replied. "At the time I mean. She kept me at arms length, made me work pretty damn hard for a second chance with her, but she never ever really got mad at me. I suppose I should have realised that wasn't exactly a normal reaction to what happened, but I was so grateful that we were still together, I chose not to read too much into it."

"And now you know you should have paid more attention?"

Danny nodded. "I think she was afraid of provoking me," he explained.

Placing his weights on the floor near his feet, Don gripped his left elbow in his right hand and pulled his arm across his chest to stretch out the muscles he'd just been exercising. "Provoking you to what?" he asked with a quizzical look.

Danny paused a moment before replying. "Look – I probably shouldn't be telling you this," he said, being deliberately evasive for a number of reasons – the main one being his unease about divulging Lindsay's personal business without her permission. "But let's just say - that punch-bag earlier?" He waved his hand towards the offending piece of gym equipment, "Was wearing a very particular face."

Flack cocked his head to one side, his eyes narrowing as a horrible suspicion began to dawn. "Not some low-life perp then?" he asked rhetorically.

Danny shook his head. "No, more like a low-life ex of my wife's," he answered.

There was a short silence as Flack absorbed the implications of that statement. "Okay," he said slowly. "I understand why you don't want to break Lindsay's confidence, but she's my friend too and I need to know, all right? What exactly did you mean when you said 'she was afraid to provoke me'?"

Danny hesitated, but eventually backed down when he saw the genuine concern shining in his friend's blue eyes. "He didn't hit her if that's what you're worried about," he said, "Not that that's any better than the reality," he added.

Flack nodded. "All right so I guess I'm getting the picture," he said, resisting the urge to push for further details. "Just do me favour, yeah? Make sure you show her that not all men are bastards, okay?"

Danny's lips twisted into a wry grimace at that. "I'm trying," he assured his colleague, "But my track record isn't too hot in that respect, is it?"

Flack shrugged, knowing that to be true, but also knowing that in spite of his past mistakes, Danny loved his wife more than life itself. "If there's anyone who can restore her faith in our sex it's you," he said with conviction.

Danny's lips quirked up into a faint smile. "Thanks," he said, appreciative of the sentiment if a little uncomfortable with it at the same time. "I ain't hugging you," he went on to quip, his face a study of feigned nonchalance.

Don shuddered exaggeratedly. "Couldn't imagine anything worse," he countered, and then laughed and reached out to clap his friend encouragingly on the shoulder. "You and Linds are going to be okay," he assured him. "I feel it in my gut."

"And we all know your gut is clairvoyant," Danny said jokingly as he picked up the pair of dumbbells he'd set aside earlier and rose to his feet. "So I guess I'm sweet, huh?"

In the shower later, Danny rinsed the last of the soap-suds from his body, and then tipped his head back and allowed the hot spray to sluice over his face and neck. His muscles were aching more painfully than pleasantly, the effort he'd put into his workout considerably more than was strictly necessary. Still, at least it had served to release some of the pent-up aggression that last night's conversation with Lindsay had provoked.

The damage done to his wife's self-esteem by her cruel and – in Danny's opinion – decidedly twisted ex had made him want to pound his fists into the walls around him in abject fury. Instead, he'd forcibly held his burgeoning anger in check, knowing that it wasn't the reaction to have with Lindsay perched on such a precarious edge emotionally. She needed his understanding and calm reassurance, not to play witness to his violent rage on her behalf.

And it wasn't as if he hadn't added to that damage with his own thoughtless behaviour, was it? Not for the first time, he questioned his own sanity at messing up so badly. What the hell had he been thinking? Why had he been so blind to how much he was hurting the woman he cared about more than anyone he'd ever met?

And what about afterwards, when he thought they'd moved on and so clearly hadn't? After learning what he had last night, his guilt had only deepened at how he'd handled Lindsay's lack of trust in him in the rocky months leading up to their split. He'd been less than patient with her constant questioning of his whereabouts, had played the role of martyr to the hilt. He'd avoided coming home after work because _he'd_ felt hard done by, when what she'd needed was his reassurances about his commitment to their marriage.

His absenteeism had only exacerbated her fears in the end, had led to her lashing out so destructively that night at Sullivan's. If he'd been more considerate of her feelings beforehand, she might have trusted him enough to deal with the situation in a more rational manner. She might have told him of her fears instead of retreating into her shell in a desperate attempt to shield herself from further hurt. Unfortunately, he'd been too wrapped up in his own selfish issues to recognise the true extent of hers and their marriage had fractured apart as a result.

What kind of husband did that make him, huh? To not know when the woman he loved was so close to the limit of her endurance? It was inattention of the worse kind and he was guilty as sin of closing his eyes to what was right in front of his face. He may have stepped up to the plate now, but nothing would absolve the responsibility of his earlier neglect. His turnaround had come far too late as far as Danny was concerned. Something that last night's revelations had proved beyond a shadow of a doubt…

_**The previous evening…**_

"Simon. We're talking about Simon…"

Danny studied Lindsay's face as her voice faltered and her fingers fluttered up to nervously play with her hair. She was as pale as a ghost, her skin carrying the translucent quality of a wraith and – god! – were her hands actually shaking with fear? He instinctively reached out to enclose them in his own and found her flesh icy-cold.

The reality of the situation crashed in on him then. Jesus! She was absolutely petrified - of him, for Christ's sake! Of what he might say when she finally bared the last of her soul. It was hard to believe that she could be that afraid, but he couldn't ignore the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

He touched his fingertips to her cheek. "Don't be scared," he murmured ineffectually, wanting to reassure her but not really knowing how.

"I can't help it," she told him shakily, her brown eyes dark with her inner turmoil. "It's like I'm about to plunge my hand into a nest of vipers."

"I always thought country girls were pretty laid back about snakes," he said with a crooked half-smile. "And my Montana's a country girl through and through," he added, gently cupping the side of her face in his palm and rubbing the pad of his thumb over the delicate arch of her cheekbone.

"Danny!" Lindsay protested weakly, and then dropped her head to his chest, blinking back the tears brought on by his affecting sweetness. "You make me want to believe," she complained, as he trailed his fingers soothingly up and down her spine.

"I make you want to believe what?" he asked, nuzzling his face into her hair.

"That I don't have to be scared of your feelings for me," she told him, her voice muffled by his t-shirt.

"And that's a bad thing?"

"No. It's just that it makes me feel like I'm flying blind without a parachute."

He kissed the top of her head. "A double whammy, huh?"

She brought her hands up to clutch almost desperately at his t-shirt. "Promise you'll catch me if I fall," she pleaded with him.

He stiffened a little at her fraught request. "Lindsay…"

"I know, I know, you can't guarantee it." She raised her gaze to his, her eyes a mirror of her conflicted soul. "Just promise me you'll try."

He framed her face in his palms. "With everything in me," he assured her before sealing that vow with a gentle kiss.

"Come on," he said, stepping away from her, but maintaining physical contact with a firm hand pressed in the small of her back. "Let's take this conversation somewhere more comfortable."

He steered her through into the lounge, lifting his free hand to turn on the main light as they passed through the doorway.

"No!" Lindsay said sharply. "Leave it."

Danny immediately dropped his hand in response. "Okay, mood lighting it is," he agreed easily.

They settled themselves on the sofa - Lindsay sitting cross-legged and straight-backed with tension, and Danny with his legs propped up on the low coffee table in front of him. Shifting his weight so that his body was angled towards hers, he reached out and curled a comforting hand over her knee.

"Tell me," he urged, his fingers warming her skin through the material of her pants.

Closing her eyes, Lindsay drew in a few deep breaths to combat her remaining jitters and then forced herself to speak.

"When I first met him, Simon was charm personified," she began falteringly, and then sighed. "I guess that's why I was so uptight with you in the beginning," she explained. "You turned on that Messer charm and it took me straight back..."

She broke off, passing a weary hand over her face. "Difference is with you, it's simply a part of who you are, whereas with Simon... with Simon it's so much more calculated." She looked at Danny, her eyes pleading with him to understand. "You get what I mean?" she asked him.

Her husband nodded. "Mr Slick had some well-practised moves, huh?" he remarked.

Lindsay dropped her gaze. "Yeah, and I – the typical gullible country girl - fell hook, line and sinker for them," she said in a voice heavy with self-disgust.

"I may have been older then, but I was still pretty green when it came to men," she went on to explain. "After Mark and I split - I went a bit wild, indulged in a series of one-night stands before I realised that just wasn't who I was. I knew that I was degrading myself and worse, betraying the values my parents had brought me up to respect. After I'd come to my senses, I re-focused my efforts on my studies and only really started dating again when I began my CSI training."

She paused, glancing down at her hands nervously clasped together in her lap. "You could say I know how to put on a good show, make it seem like I'm more experienced than I am," she said.

"You make it sound like being inexperienced is something to be ashamed of," Danny observed.

Lindsay shrugged her shoulders. "Isn't it?" she enquired.

Danny frowned. "Is that what you honestly believe?"

Lindsay looked away from his steady gaze, uncomfortable with the question. "I don't know, I…"

She huffed out her breath, exasperated at her inability to articulate her thoughts. "Don't you sometimes wish for someone who's more… well, knowledgeable?" she eventually blurted out.

"I've never noticed you particularly lacking," Danny commented mildly, sensing that his answer was more important than it should be.

When she still refused to look him in the eye, he sighed. "You don't believe me," he accused.

Lindsay bit her lip, her gaze steadfastly downcast. "I'm trying to," she told him in hushed tones.

He reached out and threaded his fingers through hers. "It seems we're gonna have to work a little harder on that," he remarked quietly.

Lindsay nodded and then threw him a small smile, bolstered by the innate tenderness of his touch.

"Go on," he urged, squeezing her fingers in gentle encouragement.

Lindsay sucked in another breath and then picked up where she'd left off. "I'd been working at the Crime Lab in Bozeman for just over a year by the time Simon and I met," she continued. "He worked at the court, but novice CSIs don't get called as expert witnesses very often so it was only when I started to testify more frequently that we finally crossed paths. We flirted back-and-forth for a couple of weeks, and then he asked me out to dinner."

She paused. "Ever since what happened with Mark, I'd avoided telling anyone too much about my past," she explained, "But Simon brought it up that first evening."

Danny's eyes widened a little at that. "He knew who you were from the beginning?"

Lindsay nodded. "Yes, but not because he'd read about it in the press, because he was a distant cousin of Sophie's," she said, referring to one of her murdered friends. "Her Mom's cousin's son or something like that. I wasn't aware of the connection, but when he told me, I was so relieved. It meant that there was never going to be that awkward moment when I had to confess what had happened to me. We didn't discuss it much, but I felt like he understood, you know? I suppose I let my guard down because of that..."

She looked down, embarrassed by her blind trust in a man who – she now realised – had been manipulating her all along.

"I slept with him on the second date," she confessed, "Which, apart from that time in college, was pretty much unheard of for me. The sex was…" She stopped, knowing that what she had to say next wouldn't be too palatable to her current audience. She shot him a faintly apologetic look. "…well, mind-blowing if you want the god's honest truth," she concluded. "The best I'd ever had in my life in actual fact."

"Until you that is," she quickly clarified off Danny's winged eyebrow.

"Nice save, babe," he commented with a dry chuckle and she smiled in spite of the underlying nerves twisting her stomach into painful knots.

She punched him lightly on the upper arm in retaliation. "I'm serious."

"What about Casanova making the earth move for ya, or my superior prowess in the sack?" her husband teased.

"Both," she said with a nervous laugh. "Look, I know this isn't something you want to hear, but I need you to understand how it was."

Danny nodded. "I'm listening," he assured her. "Under duress maybe, but I'm listening."

"Mine and Simon's relationship was always very physical," Lindsay told him. "It went deeper than that for me of course – I wouldn't have been with him if it didn't - but sex was high on the list of priorities for us even so." She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "He taught me things, broadened my horizons considerably. He was like a drug for me in that respect I suppose – I was definitely riding some sort of endorphin high for those first few months we were together."

"Which is why you find it so difficult being that out of control now," Danny remarked insightfully, recalling the first time it had truly come together for them sexually and her rather over-the-top reaction to that.

It had been a few weeks after their first night together when the initial awkwardness of their newly-discovered intimacy had morphed into a deep physical and emotional synergy. As he'd collapsed, stunned and breathless, in the immediate aftermath, he remembered the inexplicable waves of tension that he'd felt coming from the woman lying beside him in the bed. Rolling over onto his side, he'd instinctively drawn her back into the circle of his arms, his hands resting comfortably on the curve of her belly and his body spooned intimately around hers.

He couldn't remember exactly what he'd said to her as they'd lain together in the dwindling twilight, but it had been light-hearted and teasing as well as appropriately appreciative and she'd promptly burst into tears. She'd laughed it off as a girly reaction to great sex at the time, but he now realised that whatever it was he'd said had reassured her enough that she'd stopped worrying about whether she would measure up or not.

Lindsay looked at him, her brown eyes large and defenceless. "It frightens me to feel that good," she told him shakily. "I'm scared to let myself go in that way because I know how easy it is to crash and burn afterwards."

Moved to the core by her fragile vulnerability, he lowered his forehead to hers. "Lindsay…"

"Don't get me wrong," she hurried on before he could say anything else. "In time, I became comfortable enough with you to not be so afraid, but the fear's always been there lurking in the background. I knew that someday, somehow, I would inevitably fall short of expectations. It was just a matter of when."

Danny shook his head. "You can't think like that, Lindsay. It's not about being perfect."

"So why did you cheat on me then?" she demanded bitterly.

He sighed. "Because I was a first class idiot, and because I was too stupid to recognise what I had until it was gone," he replied.

Cupping her chin in his hand, he turned her face to his. "And you know what else? When I did eventually figure it out, it still scared the hell outta me because no matter how sure you are about someone, it's hard to put yourself on the line like that. We've both been guilty of holding back from each other, just in different ways and for different reasons."

Lindsay nodded. "I don't want to be governed by my fears anymore," she told him.

"So tell me how I can help you get past them," he urged her.

Lindsay closed her eyes, a single tear running down her cheek. She wanted so desperately to open up that window in her heart, but she needed him to know the full story before she did. Opening her eyes, she curled her hand around his wrist and drew his hand away from her face. His touch was both comforting and restricting to her at the same time. Right now, she felt uncomfortably crowded by him, but knew it was only an adverse reaction to her overwhelming fear of rejection rather than anything more profound.

"You need to understand," she went on before the last vestiges of her courage deserted her. "I was all the way in love with Simon; I held nothing back from him. I gave myself over to him completely. He made me feel safe. More than that, he made me feel wanted, cherished even. I hadn't felt that way in years and I had all these romantic visions of us getting married, making babies and living happily-ever-after. I guess that's why I couldn't handle what happened next. Mark stole away my hope at a time when I needed to move on from my past, but Simon crushed my dreams when I was finally starting to believe in a happy future for myself."

"I think he did more than just crush your dreams," Danny observed quietly. "I think he shattered your spirit too."

Lindsay sighed. "Not really, he just validated everything I've always known about myself but didn't want to accept."

Danny didn't like the ominous tone of that statement. There'd been hints along the way at the depth of her self-esteem issues, but he still wasn't one hundred percent certain of what she saw when she looked in the mirror. He didn't like to imagine, because whatever it was, it wasn't good and it was so deeply ingrained that it would be incredibly hard to convince her to accept otherwise.

Now that her story was reaching the point of no return, Lindsay's muscles tightened like bands of steel beneath her skin. Her stomach churned with wave-upon-wave of roiling nausea. How was she going to do this? How could she bring herself to take Danny down into the depths of her darkest fears, but trust him enough to guide her safely back to the surface? She wanted to run and hide, but she had no escape route. She had to follow through whether she liked it or not.

Her breath whooshed from her lungs as she felt Danny's hands close over her rigid shoulders, his thumbs digging into the tight knot of tension at the nape of her neck. "Deep breaths," he urged, bringing her attention to the fact that she'd begun to hyperventilate in her anxiety.

"I'm sorry," she gasped as she struggled against the tightness in her chest, battling to get her erratic breathing back under control. "I'm sorry."

Having born witness to a couple of her panic attacks now, Danny was no longer quite so freaked out by them, but it was horrible to watch her suffer nonetheless. Her skin was grey, her lips tinged with blue from the sudden lack of oxygen, while her eyes were wide and brimming with tears. Moving from his seat beside her, he knelt directly in front of her and took her trembling hands in his.

"Relax, breathe," he murmured, leaning forward to feather reassuring kisses across her clammy brow. "Look at me," he urged, drawing her glassy gaze to his. "I love you, okay? Nothing you could say will change that."

Lindsay wanted to believe him, but the less rational part of her brain insisted that she was kidding herself. It was telling her that she couldn't trust him, that he would reject her like every other man she'd ever loved had. She was so tired of fighting her see-sawing emotions every single damn day though; it was time for the constant uncertainty to stop. Surrender was weakness, but she couldn't stay strong anymore. She tightened her hands on Danny's, hanging on for dear life as she bravely cast herself into the waiting abyss.

"It was little things to start with," she said woodenly, her voice sounding hollow and flat as she forced herself to relive some of her darkest moments. "My top was too low-cut, or too high-necked. I was crowding him, but at the same time spending too much time at the Crime Lab. I'd cooked Mac-and-cheese for dinner when he'd wanted pizza, stupid things like that. I thought it was just teething troubles. You know those minor irritations that you have to learn to live with once the rose-tinted glasses have come off?"

"I get the drift," Danny said calmly as he rose to sit back down beside her on the sofa cushions.

He wanted to draw her into his lap, hold her close, but he was afraid that it would break the spell. Her breathing had calmed, but he could tell she was still somewhere outside of herself. It was almost as if she had to remove herself from reality in order to speak the words. He carefully enclosed one of her small hands in both of his, the physical contact an invisible tie that bound them together even as her deep-rooted insecurities threatened to tear them apart.

"We hadn't officially moved into together," Lindsay continued mechanically, barely acknowledging the fact that he'd spoken. "But I pretty much spent all my time at his apartment. Most of the time things were good between us. We had fun – our love-life was still off the scale as far as I was concerned. But then he'd go out without me… and come back smelling of alcohol and cheap perfume."

She shook her head. "He said it was nothing, a little harmless flirting. He always came home to me so what did I have to complain about? He'd kiss me, make love to me, and I'd let myself forget, tell myself that it didn't matter as long as it was me in his bed. I loved him and I trusted him. I convinced myself I was just being paranoid – and in some respects I was, I don't think he ever slept with any of the women he met. I think he enjoyed the stranglehold his noble restraint gave him over me."

Danny made a derisive sound in the back at his throat at that, but didn't otherwise comment.

"And then one night we went out with a group of friends. I hadn't been out in a while, what with a rush of cases at the Lab and playing house with Simon when I was off-shift. I was genuinely having a good time so when he vanished part way through the evening, I didn't pay it much mind. Eventually I went looking for him of course - and discovered him on the dance-floor cosying up to some bleached blonde Marilyn Monroe look-alike."

Danny closed his eyes. "No wonder you freaked out so badly that night at Sullivan's," he said.

Lindsay nodded. "Seeing that woman hanging off you was one horrible case of déjà vu for me," she admitted. "Back then, I didn't just take it though – I told him in no uncertain terms that it wasn't appropriate behaviour for a man in a serious relationship."

She sucked in a breath. "He didn't argue, he freely admitted that he'd stepped over the line and he promised me faithfully that it wouldn't happen again. He sweet-talked me into forgiving him and I thought that was the end of it."

"Except it wasn't?" Danny prompted when she paused in her narrative, her hand tensing in his.

"No," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "When we got home, he came on really strong, really aggressively. Said the least I could do as his 'serious' girlfriend was appropriately satisfy his libido. After all, he wouldn't have to resort to flirting with other women if I made more of an effort, if I wasn't so cold and passionless in bed..."

Lindsay's breath hitched as Danny swore profusely under his breath, his imagination working overtime. "He didn't rape me," she assured him, unnerved by the flash of intense anger in his eyes. "That wasn't his style. He seduced me even as he criticised me. I know it doesn't make any sense, but I was completely in his thrall, so in love that I would have done anything for him."

Danny nodded. He'd seen it before, too many times. It didn't quite gel with the strong woman he knew his wife to be, but he'd witnessed her desperate need for his good opinion and could understand how she'd gotten herself caught up in such a destructive relationship. He could see that her experience with Simon had strengthened her back-bone, even as it made her more vulnerable to any kind of personal criticism from those she loved.

"His verbal attacks got worse after that night, but I couldn't walk away. I let him chip, chip, chip away at my self-confidence until I didn't have any strength left to fight back. I tried everything to please him, but nothing was ever good enough. My depression started to take hold again, and I couldn't find my way back out of it. My only saving grace was my work – somehow I managed to keep it together there and I caught a lucky break with the McGinty case. Against all odds, I was making a name for myself professionally despite the chaos my personal life was becoming."

"The blood scatter analysis," Danny realised, his almost photographic memory providing him with the relevant details, "The case that put you on Mac's radar."

"Yeah," Lindsay said with faint smile before her expression darkened once more. "It all finally came to a head on the anniversary of the shooting," she told him. "We'd been out for a meal and he'd been blatantly flirting with the waitress all evening. It pissed me off so I confronted him when we got home…"

She broke off as her pulse quickened and her eyes filled. "He just turned on me, told me I should have died instead of Sophie; that I was a sorry excuse for a woman and it was no wonder he needed the lights off before he could make love to me..."

She began to sob then, but somehow managed to stumble her way through all the vile and intensely personal taunts levelled at her by a man who had once professed to love her.

"I don't understand - how can that kind of love turn into that kind of hate?" she demanded of Danny when he was about ready to destroy the furniture in impotent fury. "What is it about me that inspires so much disgust in the opposite sex? I look in the mirror and I know I'm no oil painting, but why Danny? Why am I never enough for the men in my life? Why was I never enough for you?"

Her questions punched a gaping chasm through his bubble of righteous anger and he didn't know what to say. Instead, he just pulled her into his arms and held her tightly while she cried. When the storm of weeping eventually began to subside, he peppered soothing kisses over her face and tenderly wiped away her tears with the backs of his fingers.

"After he'd walked out and left me in a hysterical heap on the floor, I wished myself dead like my friends," she confessed with breathtaking candour. "I figured it would be better that way."

"God Lindsay, don't say that!" Danny exclaimed in a choked voice, tightening his arms around her in reaction.

"I only felt that way for a brief moment," she assured him, "But it was very vivid and very real. The scariest thing of all was that I felt nothing but relief, relief that the pain would finally be over and that I wouldn't have to live with it anymore. But then I thought about my family, about what losing me would do to them and I…"

She shuddered once and then sat up straighter, pulling away from him as her indomitable strength of character timely reasserted itself. "I swore that I would never allow anyone to bring me that low again," she finished.

"Hence the reason you never confronted me over Rikki, why you shut me out after that night at Sullivan's," Danny said.

Lindsay nodded. "I know that makes me a coward."

Danny shook his head. "No, it makes you human," he told her, "And me a goddamn fool for taking the easy way out and letting it slide. It only made things worse for you in the end."

Lindsay wasn't sure that was particularly the case, but she didn't contradict him. She was feeling a lot calmer now that she'd told him everything, but she couldn't say her mind had especially been put at rest. She was uneasy about what was still to come. It felt as if there was a ticking time-bomb yet to explode and her nerves remained on edge because of that.

"What happened then?" Danny asked, bringing her attention back to their conversation.

"Afterwards, you mean?"

He nodded.

"I called Mel and she drove out to pick me up," she told him. "It was the middle of the night, but she still came."

"Of course she did. She's your sister and she'd do anything for you."

Lindsay nodded. "She took care of me like she always does. She wanted to call Mom and Dad, but I wasn't ready for that. I can talk to my parents about most things, but Simon…" She broke off and shook her head. "There are still some things they don't know because I could never bring myself to tell them the worst of what he said to me that night."

"Because of the specific context of some of it," Danny surmised, and then shook his head. "No wonder Mel is so fiercely protective of you. She's the only one who knows everything, isn't she?"

Lindsay nodded. "She helped me to realise that I'd been a victim of emotional abuse and that I shouldn't let Simon's opinion carry too much weight."

"But you do let it," Danny countered softly.

Lindsay nodded, ashamed of her continued weakness in that respect. "It's a daily battle. When I'm on an even keel, I can see things for what they are. But when I feeling down, I get sucked back into that cycle of self-doubt again and I can't seem to escape it. I relive that night - and the things he said to me - over and over until it's all I can hear."

She bit her lip. "I was afraid to love you, but there came a point when I couldn't deny my feelings for you any longer. I took a calculated risk and hoped that maybe, just this once, things would work out okay. I don't regret that choice, but I need to hear the truth from you now."

"The truth about what?" Danny asked, even though he thought he already knew.

Lindsay swallowed the lump of apprehension that had arisen in her throat. "What you really think of me – as a person, as a woman. No sugar-coating, just complete and total honesty."

"You want me to give you marks outta ten, rate you in my little black book?"

Too focused on her mission to notice the biting sarcasm in his words, Lindsay earnestly nodded her head. "Exactly - yes."

"No way!" Danny's tone brooked no refusal and Lindsay felt her heart drop like a stone inside her chest.

"Why?" she demanded wildly.

"Because it's completely inappropriate!" he shot back heatedly before forcibly reining in his temper, "Because you're my wife and I love you, and because it doesn't really matter what I say anyway. Until you can look in a mirror and truly like what you see, you're only going to hear the negative."

Tears spilled down Lindsay's cheeks. After being brave enough to confide in him, he was now going to turn around and leave her wondering? If he loved her, why would he not just tell her what she needed to know? Why?

"You said you wanted to help me," she accused. "This is the only way you can."

Danny shook his head. "No, no, it isn't." he refuted. "You just think it is. You have the whole thing completely out of proportion. Understandably so, given what that bastard put you through, but I'm not going to feed into those delusions, Lindsay, I refuse to. I mean let's be honest here - I could give you ten out of ten on all counts, but you wouldn't believe me, would you?"

"Nobody's that perfect, Danny."

"No, you're right, they're not – but what if I gave you eight out of ten in a particular category? What then, huh? What would you focus on? The eight you rate, or the two you don't?"

"I…" Lindsay faltered, knowing in her heart of hearts that she would obsess over the missing two rather than be grateful for the remaining eight.

"See," he said gently. "I can't win, can I? You talk the talk, Lindsay, but I don't think you really feel it… not in here." He touched two fingers to her breastbone to emphasise his point, "...not where it counts."

He shook his head. "Can't you see how back to front you've got everything? In one breath, you're telling me you were a victim of emotional abuse, and then in the next, you're asking me to refute an opinion that you say doesn't matter."

"Except it does, doesn't it?" he concluded quietly. "Despite what your head is telling you, deep down you still feel like the woman he painted you to be, don't you? Someone who is unworthy, someone who is less than everyone else."

Lindsay's only response was a heart-rending sob. Drawing her knees up to her chest, she began to rock back-and-forth as tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks.

"And I've made those feelings of inadequacy worse," Danny concluded, guilt weighing heavy on his soul at the sight of her distress. "You don't trust me, and until you do, nothing I say is gonna make a blind bit of difference to the way you feel inside."

"I don't want to feel this way anymore," she sobbed, burying her face against her knees.

"I know you don't, baby," he said, stroking a hand over her hair, "And I don't want you to either, but there is no quick solution to this."

"You won't leave me?" she almost begged.

He drew her into his arms. "I'm not going anywhere, I promise," he vowed. "If you don't believe anything else right now, believe that…"

_**Back in the present…**_

Cursing under his breath, Danny shut off the shower and stepped free of the stall, grabbing a towel to scrub himself dry while his mind continued to mull over the events of the previous evening.

The trouble was – despite his heartfelt reassurances - he hadn't the faintest clue how best to help her. He couldn't take back what she'd already suffered so where did that leave them? Her revelations had brought several things home to him, but that newly acquired knowledge was scant comfort to him now. In fact it only made him more frustrated with himself for his previous inattention.

He'd never once viewed his involvement with Rikki as any kind of negative reflection on his relationship with Lindsay, you see. For him, it had always been an out-of-character, one-off mistake of his own making, but he was now forced to accept that for Lindsay, it had felt like a complete and utter rejection of everything she was. He'd been wondering what it was that she wanted him to say, and now he knew. She wanted him to tell her where she'd been going wrong, how she could mould herself into the woman he wanted. The very prospect of her thinking that way made him feel sick to the stomach and even more ashamed of his infidelity than he already was.

How could he convince her that she was a beautiful and desirable woman when he'd slept with someone else? When her first love had betrayed her in the same way and her second had convinced her that she was a woman in need of improvement on every goddamn level? He thought her need to wait when they'd officially started seeing each other was just a reflection of her upbringing, but now he understood it to be so much more complex than that.

She'd been scared, scared that she wouldn't come up to scratch. Her alcohol-fuelled boldness their first night together had been a desperate attempt to prove herself. She'd always responded so eagerly to his touch, but now he worried that some of that responsiveness was pure bravado and that she wasn't as relaxed with him as he'd always believed. They would really have to have an honest and frank talk about that some time in the near future, because the last thing he wanted was for her to be doing things she was uncomfortable with, or accepting his advances when she wasn't really in the mood.

After pulling on his boxer shorts, he headed into the locker-room to get fully dressed, but was distracted by his ringing cell just as he was tugging a clean t-shirt on over his head.

"Hey babe! How ya doin'?" he answered in as cheery tone as he could muster when he noticed Lindsay's face on the blinking display.

"Hey!" His wife's voice sounded thin and reedy in comparison to his jocular tones. "You at work?"

"No, I'm at the Gym, just finished a workout." Tucking his phone between his ear and hunched shoulder, he glanced at his watch as he fastened it around his wrist. "I've gotta go back to the Lab for a couple of hours before I clock off, but I can swing by Stella's place after that if you want?"

"You don't have to."

He bit back the inevitable sigh. "I know I don't," he said calmly, "But I want to."

There was a short pause. "Even after last night?" she asked him hesitantly.

"Especially after last night," he replied firmly. "Listen - I've been doing some thinking – I didn't exactly give you the response you wanted, did I?"

"I understand the reasons for that, Danny," Lindsay said, her voice sounding much stronger, a happenstance that filled him with a profound sense of relief.

Her emotional fragility scared the hell out of him sometimes so he couldn't have been more thankful for the seemingly endless supply of internal resilience that appeared to go along with it. Many in her shoes would have buckled under by now, yet she remained standing, a little wobbly on her feet maybe, but still basically upright nonetheless. He couldn't be more proud of her ability to endure.

There had to be a way that he could subtly show her what she meant to him, a way of building up her self-confidence from the inside out. He was an intelligent guy – had graduated top of his class at the Academy, and was a skilled and increasingly respected Crime Scene Investigator to boot. He could figure out how to make the woman he loved understand her appeal. He just had to apply a little Messer magic to the problem. He was thirty-seven years old, it hadn't failed him yet and he wasn't about to let it do so now.

"I'm glad to hear it," he said, the cogs in his brain clicking into action as they mused over this latest conundrum. "Look - I'll see you in a few hours, yeah?"

"Sure – I'll see you then. And Danny?"

"Mmm?"

"I'm glad I plucked up the courage to make this call."

"Me too," he told her. "But for the record? I would have come over anyway whether you called me or not."

He heard her breath hitch. She was still expecting the other shoe to drop, but was slowly starting to accept that he wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.

"I still feel like I'm walking on a tightrope with you half the time," she confided in him.

"So let's work on widening it to a balance beam, huh?" he told her soothingly.

"We can do that," she agreed.

"Good," he said with satisfied nod. "And babe – one more thing before you go?"

"Yes?"

"Just remember - tightropes always have safety nets. It's government regulation."

See Messer magic, he thought absently to himself on hearing her ripple of laughter. Worked like a charm every time…

_**To be**__** continued…**_


	33. Evolution

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes****: **Hey! New chapter for you. It's a tiny bit shorter than usual, but that's just where the chapter break fell. Hope you enjoy!

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 33 – Evolution**_

The following Tuesday, Lindsay once again found herself decidedly nervous at the prospect of her and Danny's couple's counselling session that afternoon.

She was getting increasingly worried about how Friday's revelations were going to impact on proceedings. To make matters worse, Danny had been out of the Lab all morning following up on a lead in the 'See No Evil' case, and had said that he'd meet her there. Consequently, she didn't have his presence to calm her over lunch, which left her feeling like she was walking a precarious tightrope as she made her way from the subway station to Samantha's office block shortly before two o'clock.

After confiding in Simone about Simon in her last therapy session, and then getting everything out in the open with Danny the following day, she hadn't been able to face going over it a third time that afternoon. So, at her husband's suggestion, she'd called Simone and asked her to pass on the relevant details to Samantha instead. What had transpired between the two women during that conversation Lindsay had no idea, and she supposed that was what was making her so jumpy now…

Well that and the fact that her husband's reaction to her revelations hadn't even come close to what she'd been expecting, of course. His unpredictability in that regard unnerved her more than she cared to admit. It took away her control of the situation and left her feeling like she was stranded up a creek without a paddle, despite the fact that she had no more secrets left to tell and so should finally be starting to relax.

It was crazy, but the whole thing was starting to feel like a bit of an anti-climax. She'd gotten herself all psyched up for the worst, but then Danny had categorically refused to play the role she'd cast him in, which left the outcome a little flat. On Friday night, his quiet sympathy and gentle understanding had felt like the comforting warmth of a fluffy blanket after several hours outside in sub-zero temperatures. But now - after some much needed sleep and some properly balanced meals - she was waiting on tenterhooks for some kind of verdict from him.

A verdict that she had the distinct impression would not be forthcoming any time soon - especially given his almost blasé attitude in the days since. His only direct reference to what had transpired between them was his suggestion that she call Simone so that she didn't have to explain all the details to Samantha today. Other than that, he'd remained suspiciously silent on the matter, a state of affairs that left her spinning in metaphorical circles. It had been a big deal for her to confide in him in the way that she had and his almost nonchalant response to that confused the hell out of her.

Take Saturday evening for instance, he'd come over after his shift as promised and they'd taken Lucy for dinner at a nearby family restaurant. Returning home afterwards, they'd tucked their daughter up in bed, and then settled in to watch a movie on DVD with Stella. Inexplicably to Lindsay, Danny had made no attempt to continue Friday night's conversation with her. He'd simply wrapped a strong arm around her shoulders and tucked her intimately against his side and then focused his attention on the flickering images on the wide-screen TV in the corner instead.

When the time had come for him to leave, Stella had discreetly retreated into the kitchen, ostensibly to dispose of the remnants of their movie-night popcorn, but really to give them a little personal space. Personal space that Danny – much to Lindsay's consternation - hadn't used for anything more than a powerful locking of lips, a cheeky wink and an appreciative cluck of his tongue as he headed for the door. This, he followed up with a breezy 'See you later, gorgeous,' as he sauntered off down the corridor like it had been nothing more than their second date!

It made her want to scream in frustration. She didn't understand it. She didn't understand him. He was acting as if everything was perfectly fine between them, when really there was so much left to say. She hoped he would be more forthcoming in therapy today because she didn't know how much longer she could stand the suspense of not knowing.

After signing in with security at the desk, she headed for the elevator and drew in a few calming breaths as the electronic voice counted up the floors to number 10. When the metal doors slid open at her destination, she stepped out into the carpeted corridor beyond and headed towards the glass-fronted reception area at the far end. Samantha's receptionist immediately sent her through and she was surprised to find Danny already installed on the buff-coloured sofa, his jean-clad legs crossed at the ankles and his hands resting comfortably on his thighs. He smiled broadly as she entered, his eyes making a slow, leisurely trip from head to toe that left reactionary tingles in its wake.

For some bizarre reason that casual scrutiny cast her back several years and made her realise just how blind she'd been to his interest in the first few months of her tenure at the New York Crime Lab. He'd often greeted her with that self same look, but she'd not fully appreciated what it meant until now. Why would she have done when a) getting involved with a work colleague was something that she'd considered career suicide at the time, and b) she just didn't view herself as all that attractive to the opposite sex? Especially to men like Danny who, when she first met him, seemed to ooze sexual confidence from each and every damn pore.

Hesitantly returning his smile, she resisted the urge to smooth down her clothing and finger-comb her hair. She hadn't thought she'd dressed for him that morning, but somehow subconsciously she had. She was wearing her usual work pants, but the top she'd chosen was considerably less conservative than her normal work-attire, flashing a rare hint of cleavage but not so much that it would be inappropriate for the Lab. The ebony and pink-ribbon-trimmed matching bra and panty set she wore underneath was definitely not everyday wear though. What had possessed her to don Megan's 'you need to get laid' birthday gift to her she didn't know – or perhaps she did but just wasn't quite ready to admit it yet.

She wanted to seduce her husband – on some level because she still needed his approval in that respect, but mostly because the walls she'd put up between them were finally starting to come down. Oh and because last night he appeared to have been specifically put on the planet to drive her utterly crazy. Why else would he have shown up at her door at 1 AM on his way home from work just to kiss her goodnight and cop a sneaky feel while he was at it? She'd expected him to stay, but he hadn't. He'd expertly set her body on fire with his touch, and then nonchalantly bid her farewell while she was trying not to melt into a puddle of lust on the floor.

"Tea?" Samantha offered as she sat down and shrugged out of her bulky winter coat.

Lindsay shook her head. "No, I… can we just get on with it?"

Samantha sat back and folded her hands together in her lap. "I assume you want to talk about what Simone contacted me about?" she said.

Lindsay nodded. "Yes, and last week's session too," she added with a sidelong glance at Danny to make sure he was in agreement with this. He raised no objection so she turned her attention back to Samantha and waited for her to begin.

"All right so let's start with last week's session then," their therapist began. "I know it was a lot for you to take in, but do you think you're more reconciled to everything now that you've had some time to process things?" she asked, directing her question at Lindsay.

"Reconciled?" Lindsay shook her head, her expression grave. "No, not yet, but I guess I better understand some of the reasons why now. And I think Danny better understands the impact it had on me too," she added.

"Because of what you told him about your ex?" Samantha enquired.

"That and also because I let him see some of the anger I feel inside over it too," Lindsay replied.

"Whereas before you'd suffered in silence?"

Lindsay nodded. "Yeah, and I guess deep down I resented him for that."

"So you feel your reticence over the matter was partly his doing?" Samantha asked her.

Lindsay shook her head. "No - not really. It's just…" She sighed. "It felt like he treated the whole situation too casually. That just because he'd said he was sorry and meant it, that that was the end of it and I shouldn't be making a fuss."

"So do _you_ think you treated the situation too casually?" Samantha asked of Danny.

Danny shook his head. "No, but in retrospect, I did take the easy way out. I didn't push her to talk about it. I was all for us just moving on and pretending it had never happened."

"Why was that do you think?" Samantha asked him.

"Why did I ever believe that was remotely possible do you mean?" Danny said rhetorically. "I suppose because I was afraid of losing her, and because I believed it was the same way for her as it was for me. You've gotta understand - that time was a real turning point for me. It was the moment I realised that I wanted Lindsay in my life for a long time to come." He shrugged. "Before then – I cared about her for sure, but I wasn't necessarily thinking long-term."

"You thought that because the commitment wasn't there from you until that point, anything that had gone before was of little consequence?" Samantha surmised.

"Well, I wouldn't quite go that far," Danny said, "But on some level, yeah, I suppose I did. I convinced myself that she understood how things were."

"And when did you realise that thinking was flawed?" Samantha asked him.

"Not until a long time afterwards," Danny replied. "I think that was part of the problem. Maybe things if we hadn't done such a good job of patching over the cracks and continuing on as if everything was as it should be, things would have been different. It was only when relations started to deteriorate between us that it became apparent that my wife didn't trust me in the way she should."

"And yet you never brought it up with her? Why?"

Danny shrugged. "I tried to – not very hard, I admit – but I did try. She got even more defensive with me when I did though, so I ended up thinking it was better to let it go. After what she told me on Friday, I understand why she reacted the way she did, but at the time, pushing her to talk about it just seemed to make a bad situation worse. I figured I'd bring it up again when things had calmed down a little." He sighed. "Only trouble was they never did. It pretty much all went to hell after that."

"To be fair, I'm not sure I would have confided in him back then anyway," Lindsay interjected. "I think I needed to hit rock-bottom before I could really open up to him."

"So what makes you trust him now when you couldn't before?" Samantha asked her.

"I suppose because he's still sitting here beside me despite everything that I've put him through," Lindsay said. "When we first split I genuinely believed I'd be better off without him. But dealing with the reality of being alone – both as a woman and a Mom - made me realise it wasn't quite as cut and dried as I'd thought."

"You never know what you have until it's gone, huh?" Samantha remarked astutely.

Lindsay threw her a sad little smile. "Something like that," she agreed. Turning to look at her husband, she lifted her hand to his face as he solemnly returned her gaze. "I see him more clearly now, I suppose," she said in a slightly wondering tone. "I couldn't separate him from others before."

Her eyes filled with liquid as some more of her excess emotional baggage fell away, leaving behind a much lighter load for her to carry. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

Danny brought his hand up to cover hers and turned his face to press his lips against her palm. "Strike One," he murmured, his voice thick with emotion even as his blue eyes sparked with a glimmer of humour.

Rolling her eyes, Lindsay punched him lightly on the shoulder in reaction. "You just can't help the baseball metaphors, can you?" she said.

He grinned at her. "It's in my blood," he told her, making her laugh in spite of herself.

"So do you feel like you're making progress here?" Samantha asked them when they eventually turned their attention back to her.

Lindsay nodded with conviction. "Definitely," she said. "I feel as if the ten tonne weight I've been carrying around on my shoulders has finally gone. Now that Danny knows everything there is to know, there is not so much for me to worry about anymore."

"And yet you were extremely tense when you arrived here today," Samantha pointed out.

Lindsay's gaze dropped, but she still managed to find the courage to say what was on her mind. "I suppose I'm a little disappointed by his reaction," she admitted.

"In what way?" Samantha asked her.

"I don't know, I expected more, I guess. He doesn't seem to have an opinion one way or the other, and that bothers me."

"So what opinion do you think he should have?"

"It doesn't matter – I just need him to say… something!" Lindsay raked her fingers through her hair in frustration. "I can't explain," she lamented.

"She's upset because I won't rate her," Danny said, getting right to the heart of the thorny matter.

"Rate her?" Samantha questioned, her brow furrowing in confusion.

"She wanted me to tell her what I thought of her," Danny explained. "Specific details, you know? Like how good her body is; how she rates in bed, whether her conversation's dazzling enough to hold my interest or not, things like that. I think she's scared that I view her in the same way that Simon did."

"And you're not prepared to allay her fears in that respect?" Samantha challenged him.

Danny shook his head. "Not in the way that she wants, no."

"It's important that you tell her how you feel though, Danny," Samantha told him. "For someone who's gone through what Lindsay has, it's especially important. She needs to hear it so that she can keep her insecurities in perspective."

Danny nodded. "I'm not disputing that, but I'm not going to sit down and discuss it like I'm giving her some sort of official evaluation. It's crass and let's face it, isn't ultimately going to reassure her of anything, is it?"

"So we need to work out a strategy that's agreeable to both of you then," Samantha said.

Danny shook his head. "No look - I need to do this in my own way, okay? Telling her what to expect defeats the object as far as I'm concerned. Instead of it being something that's just a natural part of our everyday lives, it gives her the opportunity to overanalyse everything. I understand that she needs to hear how I feel and that it's important that I do something to address that, but that's as far as I'm willing to discuss it at the moment."

Sensing that she'd be banging her head against a brick wall if she pressed the point any further, Samantha relented. "All right – I think I understand something of where you're coming from, but we still need to assess whether your approach is achieving the desired result or not. I suggest we evaluate how Lindsay's feeling on a weekly basis and take it from there."

Danny nodded. "Okay, I can work with that," he agreed.

"And you Lindsay?" Samantha asked her.

"I don't like not knowing what's going on," Lindsay said, "But I can understand how he feels. I do put words into his mouth sometimes and I can pick things apart to the point of destroying the original intent behind them. I suppose I put up a defensive wall to protect myself. I don't ever want to feel the way Simon made me feel again and that's my way of ensuring that it doesn't happen."

"Then Danny probably has the right idea about being unpredictable," Samantha decided. "It might make you feel a little off-balance, especially in the beginning, but it has a greater chance of sinking in if you don't know what to expect."

"I suppose that makes sense even if I don't like the position it puts me in," Lindsay concurred.

"So how are you feeling about things right now?" Samantha asked her.

"Apprehensive," Lindsay told her truthfully, "Like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm still scared of rejection, but I think I can face up to it now without having a panic attack at the mere thought of what might happen if I do. I suppose that's progress, huh?"

Samantha smiled. "I think so," she agreed, and then tactically introduced a change in subject. "Now we've not really discussed how Friday's revelations affected Danny so let's go back to that, shall we?"

"What do you want to know?" Danny asked her, slightly blind-sided by the switch in topic.

"How did hearing what Lindsay had been through with her ex-boyfriend make you feel?"

Danny shrugged. "Angry," he replied, "Outraged that anyone could put her through that kind of pain. And then ashamed because I knew I was just as guilty of it – maybe not in the same way as Simon, but I've added to her insecurities, made her feel as if she were lacking somehow."

"So you accept that some of your actions had a much deeper effect on her than you'd originally imagined?"

Danny sighed. "Yeah. I… I think she feels that she was responsible for what happened with Rikki in some way. That if she'd been enough for me, I wouldn't have had my head turned by someone else."

Samantha looked at Lindsay. "Is that true?"

Lindsay wanted to deny it but couldn't. "When you're repeatedly told that you don't measure up, that other women have more appeal than you; you eventually start to believe it," she said. "How else was I supposed to feel?"

"All right so let's look at this from a different angle," Samantha decided. "How would you view your sex life?"

The question was blunt and to the point and took Lindsay back a little. "Mine and Danny's you mean?" she questioned in confusion.

Samantha nodded. "Yes. I don't need details, just a general assessment."

"Well apart from the fact that it's non existent right now, it's good, I mean great… I…" Lindsay stopped for a moment before continuing. "It's always fulfilled me."

"But…" Samantha prompted, sensing the hesitation in the other woman's tone.

"That's what I thought about Simon and it turned out he didn't share the same opinion." Lindsay replied, wringing her hands in sudden anxiety. "I'm not as experienced in that area as either him or Danny so maybe my vision is a little distorted."

"And what would you say to that?" Samantha asked Danny.

"That her vision is distorted all right, but not in the way that she thinks. Yes, when we first got together, she may have been less experienced than other women I'd been with, but I always kind of liked that. It meant that her reactions were more spontaneous, more natural."

"So her inexperience didn't handicap her in anyway?"

"Of course not. I suppose what worries me now is that she pushed herself beyond what she may have been comfortable with because she didn't want to disappoint me. I hope I would have noticed if she'd been that reluctant, but she's so good at putting on a front, I'm scared that it passed me by. Making love isn't about being a performing monkey; it's supposed to be about mutual pleasure – the emphasis being on the mutual as far as I'm concerned. Where's the pleasure in making your partner feel uncomfortable?"

"So are his fears justified?" Samantha asked Lindsay.

The other woman swallowed. "No, I… I mean I _was_ very conscious of my naivety and made an effort to suppress that. And maybe sometimes I pushed myself to try things when initially I may have been a bit reluctant..."

"Define 'a bit reluctant'?" Danny demanded before she could continue any further.

"I meant that it was new for me and I was a bit apprehensive…" She reached out and placed her hand over his. "Danny, you have never forced me into anything I didn't want to do. I always knew that I could say no."

"You sure?" he pressed.

"I'm sure," she told him sincerely.

Danny let out his breath in relief. "Well, thank god for that," he declared.

"This is something you've been concerned about?" Samantha asked him.

"Ever since Friday night, yeah," Danny told her. "It made me sick to think that she'd… I'd…" He broke off and shook his head. "I would _never_ want that." He paused. "So where do we go from here?" he asked.

"In what respect?" Samantha returned, not understanding what he meant.

"We umm… we agreed that we wouldn't have sex until things were less strained between us," Danny explained. "It was shortly after we made the decision we wanted to give our marriage another shot. We err… we slept together and although I think it was probably what we needed at the time, I still felt that it was too soon, that we shouldn't muddy the waters in that way. Sex can create a false bond and we needed to reconnect on a higher emotional level than that."

"Seems like it was a properly thought-out decision then," Samantha observed.

Danny inclined his head. "Yes," he agreed. "But I'm starting to think it's a bad thing for us to stick with it now – especially after what Lindsay told me about Simon. For us to continue to abstain might inadvertently re-enforce the opinion that she's not attractive to me in that way."

"That wouldn't be an appropriate reason for the two of you to re-establish your intimacy though, Danny," Samantha said. "Not if your initial reasoning still stands."

"It's something I've been thinking about for a while now," he assured her. "It's not just about what Lindsay told me. That simply added extra weight to my opinion. What was a barrier to us finding that deeper level of emotional connection in the beginning is now something that's getting in the way of us moving forward."

"You need to re-establish your physical bond for your relationship to become properly whole again?" Samantha suggested.

Danny nodded. "Exactly."

"Then I think your reasoning is sound," Samantha told him.

"So you don't think it would be a mistake?" he asked her.

"I probably wouldn't have recommended it a few weeks ago, but I think you've come a long way since then. As long as making love is an expression of what you feel and not the tie that binds you together then you're in a healthy place. If you're both ready then physical intimacy will only help to strengthen your relationship."

"So – are we ready?" Danny asked Lindsay.

"I think so," she replied, coyly ducking her gaze.

"I wouldn't rush headlong into it," Samantha advised. "A little seduction goes a long way in cases like these."

Danny grinned. "So we should aim for second and third base before we go for the home-run, huh?" he suggested cheekily.

Samantha laughed. "You definitely do like your baseball metaphors, don't you?" she commented light-heartedly. "But in this case, I would say they describe the situation perfectly," she continued more seriously. "Long established couples can understandably get stuck in a routine and forget to mix it up. A lot of the pleasure is in the build-up so take the time for that. I know that's easier said than done with busy jobs and parenthood to juggle, but the effort will be worth it in the end, I assure you."

Danny nodded, finally satisfied that what he had in mind wouldn't enhance things in one way while inadvertently derailing them in another.

"So apart from your concern about Lindsay participating more than she was willing to sexually, what else did learning about her relationship with her ex teach you?" Samantha asked him, returning to the initial thread of the discussion.

"I guess it helped me to understand just how deep her self-esteem issues go," Danny answered, "And how I've added to them without meaning to. I understand now that I need to make more of an effort to overturn some of her long-held opinions about herself. My vague reassurances weren't enough; it's going to take a lot more from me to turn things around."

He sighed. "I suppose what worries me the most is Lindsay's willingness to participate in that. I know she wants this, but it's a lot of walls for her to break through all at once."

"That's true," Samantha agreed. "While I'm sure you can make significant in-roads reasonably quickly, it could be years before those wounds are truly healed and they may never be scar-free."

"I'm not expecting perfect," Danny said. "I'm as flawed as the next person, but I do need her to be fully on board with this. She confides in her sister, Mel, and I need her to be that open with me. I know it's not easy for her to do that, but it's the goal I think we need to work towards. It doesn't matter if she never manages to beat her insecurities. I just don't want to be kept in the dark about them, that's all."

"It hurt you that she shut you out."

"It broke my heart that she shut me out," Danny corrected. "I know why now, and I know I didn't do enough to make things right, but she just admitted that she may not have confided in me even if I had pushed and that's what scares me. I need to know that we're beyond that now."

"Your own behaviour has to play a part though, Danny," Samantha told him.

He nodded. "Of course it does, that's not what I'm talking about. If I do give her a reason to kick me to the curb then that's fair enough, but events like the one that broke us up in the first place don't. I know I didn't handle the situation all that well, and I know she had a right to be pissed that I didn't make things clear with that women right from the get-go..."

He paused as a myriad of 'if only's scattered his thoughts. "_But_," he eventually continued, "Events wouldn't have gone any further than what Lindsay walked in on – I would have told Little Miss Grabby-Hands that I was married and not interested. What happened might well have been a reason for her to force me to sleep on the sofa for a night or two, but it shouldn't have been a reason for divorce. It was something that we should have talked out and moved on from. All I want is her assurance that I'm not going to hit a brick-wall like that again. That's not so much to ask is it?"

"I don't know, is it?" Samantha asked of Lindsay.

"If he keeps up his end of the deal then no, I don't think so," Lindsay said. "I can't guarantee I won't relapse every once in a while, but I think that what we've been through in this last year will jolt me out of it before it goes too far."

"You won't be entering into it from a position of ignorance anymore either," Samantha pointed out to Danny. "That'll give you more power over the outcome than maybe you had before."

Danny nodded. "I know. I just… I think we're inevitably going to fight every once in a while – it'd be unrealistic to think otherwise - but I'm frightened of things getting out of control again."

"But that's why you're here, isn't it?" Samantha said, "To equip yourselves with the necessary tools to prevent that? You're only at the start of that journey right now. You've both been hurt so you're both vulnerable emotionally, but I think as time goes on your confidence in yourselves and each other will grow and you'll feel more relaxed about everything. Nobody can enter a relationship with an absolute guarantee, but you can enter into it with a commitment to work together to overcome any obstacle you might face. The fact that you're sitting side-by-side on that sofa right now tells me that you've already made that commitment. I'm sure you've both found it extremely painful and uncomfortable at times, but you've been brave enough to say the things that needed to be said. Whether you realise it or not, you've been a lot more open than some couples I work with are, which, to me, is a very good sign. Keep it up and I think you'll find yourselves where you want to be."

"Hey babe, listen to that," Danny said, bumping Lindsay playfully with his shoulder. "We're acing the class!"

"Danny!" Lindsay protested with a giggle even though she echoed the sentiment. It was good to hear that they were on the right track. When you were stuck in the middle of all those rollercoaster emotions, it was hard to see the wood for the trees sometimes.

Samantha smiled. "Okay so on that positive note, I think it's time to wrap this up," she said, glancing at her watch. "I'll see you both next week, yeah?"

"Count on it," Danny said as he rose to his feet and solicitously held out his hand to Lindsay to help her up.

"You don't have to go back to the Lab, do you?" she asked him as they emerged from the office block onto the bustling street a few minutes later.

Danny hesitated. "No umm… my parents are in town," he told her apologetically. "I told Shelley they'd pick Lucy up from pre-school."

"Oh," Lindsay said, a little disappointed that their time together was to be cut short. She felt more positive about their relationship than she had in ages. She had no idea why she'd been so worried about today's session. It truly felt like they'd turned a significant corner.

"You've not told them about us yet, have you?" she concluded.

Danny shook his head. "No, but it's probably about time I did," he decided. "There's no time like the present, huh?" He glanced over at her. "I could probably persuade them to take her for the night once they know…" he added for extra emphasis.

"They came to see you as well as Lucy," Lindsay chastised him even though the promise she heard in his voice made her stomach turn pleasant flip-flops.

He shrugged one shoulder. "True, but I reckon it's probably about 90% Lucy and only around 10% me," he said self-deprecatingly.

Lindsay laughed. "Danny!"

He chuckled. "You can't blame a guy for trying," he defended. "I thought I'd make a run on that second base," he added with a salacious wink.

"Didn't you achieve that goal last night?" she countered teasingly.

He wrinkled his nose. "Nah, it wasn't skin-on-skin."

She nodded with mock solemnity. "An important distinction," she remarked playfully.

"Exactly," he concurred with a wicked twinkle in his eye.

Lindsay smiled. "Are you sure you're ready for your Mom and Dad to know?" she asked him, her sunny expression turning more serious.

Danny nodded. "I can't expect Lucy to hold her tongue for much longer and my main reason for not telling them was my Ma confusing me with her expectations before the two of us had found our feet again. I know we're not there yet, but we've come a long way in a short time and things are a lot straighter in my head now." He glanced over at her. "You think you can handle it?"

"Seeing your Mom and Dad again?" Lindsay asked. She shrugged. "I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me nervous." Her gaze dropped to her feet. "Your Mom's gonna want to know everything."

"Yeah well, she doesn't get to know," Danny said firmly. "Our business is our business, and more importantly your business is yours." He slid a finger under her chin and lifted her face to his. "I know you're not ready for that," he assured her gently.

"Maybe in time…"

He nodded. "Maybe, but for now all she needs to know is that we're working on a reconciliation, and if she wants that to succeed then she needs to butt out and let us do it our own way."

Lindsay smiled at his fierce tone. "She's not _that_ bad," she said, feeling the need to defend her mother-in-law in the wake of the criticism levelled at her.

"No," Danny admitted, "But sometimes she just can't help herself and it's better to tell her straight than have to deal with consequences."

He squeezed her fingers. "I wouldn't worry though. She's always adored you. You're the woman who tamed her wayward son so you can do no wrong in my mother's eyes."

Lindsay laughed. "I'm not sure there was all that much taming involved," she remarked lightly, "But I suppose it's better than having a 'no woman is good enough for my son' kind of mother-in-law."

"Yeah – you lucked out there, didn't ya? Sexy, bad-ass husband _and_ the right kind of mother-in-law..."

"Not forgetting the cute kid…" Lindsay put in with a smile.

"She does kind of stick in the memory," Danny conceded. He grinned at her. "A knock-out like her Daddy mixed with the gorgeous genes of her Mommy," he declared. "She couldn't lose. Evolution at its finest even if I do say so myself."

Lindsay glowed at the inherent compliment in that statement. "I have gorgeous genes, huh?"

Danny stopped in his tracks and turned to face her. "Definitely," he said, stroking his fingers through her hair and framing her face in his palms. "I'll point some of them out to you later," he murmured as his lips brushed hers in the lightest of kisses.

"Promise?" she asked, mesmerised by the tenderness in his delicate touch.

"I personally guarantee it," he told her before his mouth closed more firmly over hers and left her in no doubt about the authenticity of that vow.

As he felt her involuntary surrender, Danny smiled inwardly to himself even as he sank deeper into their embrace.

Strike Two...

_**To be**__** continued…**_


	34. Reawakening

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes****: **Hey all! New chapter for you. Sorry about the wait, but I've been away so haven't had as much time to write. Having said that, armed with a notebook and pen, I did manage to write some of this on holiday so the wait actually hasn't been as long as it could have been.

Also, just so you know, there are some fairly adult scenes and situations in this chapter. I don't want to make this an M-rated story, but I'm probably going to push the current rating as far as it'll go before this story is done – not so much in this chapter but possibly in later ones. Apologies in advance if it ever over-steps the mark for anyone.

Anyway, enough of my waffle, let's get on with the show…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 34 – Reawakening**_

"You didn't have to come with me you know," Lindsay said over her shoulder, as she turned the key in the lock and pushed open the apartment door about half an hour later. "I could have met you at your place."

"And leave me to face my Mom alone, no thanks," Danny said, as he followed her inside and shut the door behind him. "If I'm submitting myself to the cross-examination then you're standing right beside me in the dock. For better for worse, remember?"

Lindsay laughed. "You're incorrigible," she declared.

"Ahh but you love me anyway," Danny countered, closing the gap between them and running a possessive hand over the curve of her butt.

She smiled even as a shiver passed through her at his blatantly proprietary touch. "More fool me, huh?"

"Be generous with the comments why don't ya?" Danny said, reaching out a finger to poke her playfully in the ribs.

She squirmed out of his way and then frowned at him as he followed her down the hall to her bedroom. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" he returned.

"I'm gonna change, Danny," she protested.

He laughed. "It's not as if I've never seen you naked before, babe," he reminded her.

"I know but…"

"But what?" He looked at her blandly, his eyes wide and seemingly guileless when she just knew he knew exactly what he was doing to her with his feigned innocence.

She shifted a little uncomfortably, not really knowing why she felt so shy all of a sudden. "I don't know. It just seems a little inappropriate that's all."

"What? So I don't get to enjoy the show?" Danny lamented with what she could have sworn was a hint of a pout. "You wearing mismatching underwear or somethin'?" he asked her.

Lindsay blushed when she remembered exactly what underwear she _was_ wearing. She studied him speculatively for a moment, and then shrugged. If Mr Overconfident wanted to play then so be it…

Danny looked around curiously as he entered the bedroom. He'd stayed over that one time a couple of weeks ago, but hadn't paid all that much attention to his surroundings, exhausted as he was. Despite it essentially being Stella's guest room, Lindsay had still managed to put her own unique stamp on the space. The patterned comforter on the bed was his wife's taste all over, but not something that he could ever see Stella buying. Framed pictures of Lucy from birth to present were positioned on every available surface too – the pair in the double-frame on the bedside cabinet particularly drawing his attention.

He picked up the silver-gilt frame to study them closer – the photo on the left was his favourite picture that he'd taken of the two of them – Lindsay was cradling a three-month old Lucy in her arms, oblivious to the camera trained on her and completely focused on her tiny daughter instead. Lucy was gazing up at her mother with her big blue eyes wide and trusting, while Lindsay looked down into her sweet little face, her rich brown eyes overflowing with maternal love. A few seconds later, she'd bent to kiss their baby's miniature rose-bud lips, but Danny had always felt that the moment before the act had said so much more.

He switched his attention to the photo on the right, a picture he'd never seen before. It had been taken around nine months to a year ago, judging by his daughter's appearance and the fact that Lindsay still looked a reasonably healthy weight. A pig-tailed Lucy was sitting on her mother's lap, while Lindsay had her arms wrapped tightly around the little girl's middle. Their cheeks were pressed closely together and they were both beaming into the camera, the shot not as candid as the one he'd snapped of mother and baby, but effortlessly natural nonetheless. It captured what he now knew must have been a rare moment of genuine happiness for his wife, and he was glad that it had not all been bad for her during the months of their separation.

"New picture?" he commented, running a finger along the edge of the frame.

"Uhh yeah," Lindsay said from behind him. "Adam took it."

"Adam?" He frowned down at the picture in his hands. Lindsay wasn't dressed in her work-clothes so she couldn't have been at the Lab.

"Yeah, he took me and Lucy out for the day on my birthday," Lindsay replied as she toed off her sensible work shoes.

Danny's frown deepened. "What? Like a date?"

There was a short silence. "No – like a friend," Lindsay responded in a sharply critical tone, making him feel instantly bad for asking. It wasn't as if he could object even if it had been a date, was it? It would be a definite case of double-standards if he did.

He took a deep breath. "So was there anybody?" he asked casually. It had never really occurred to him before, but now that the thought had entered his head, he needed to know.

Lindsay paused in the act of stepping out of her black work-pants. Danny's back was turned, but his shoulders were rigid with tension beneath his t-shirt. She felt an involuntary smile tug at the corners of her lips. He clearly hated the thought of her dating anyone else. She wasn't sure why, but that inexplicably boosted her ego even as it caused a little niggle of irritation too. She was sorely tempted to stir the embers of that unconscious flash of jealousy, but in the end was too honest to tell him anything but the truth.

"No, no-one," she said and watched his shoulders relax at the negative reply. "I was asked out a couple of times, but I wasn't really ready so…" She broke off, leaving him to fill in the blanks as she unbuttoned her top and let it slide from her shoulders.

Danny turned towards her then, and whatever he'd been about to say fused in his brain as a bolt of desire punched a hole right through the centre of his thought processes. Unable to help himself, he stared at her like a hormone-filled teenager experiencing his first sexual encounter, rather than a man with close to twenty years of know-how under his belt.

"Put your tongue back in, babe," Lindsay advised him dryly, secretly delighted by his dumb-struck reaction. "It's not like you haven't seen me naked before," she went on, purposely echoing his earlier statement to her.

"Well, there's naked and there's that…" he said, circling his finger at the provocative underwear she wore before crossing the floor in two long strides. His hands settled on her hips, the warmth of his fingers burning her bare flesh as he dipped his head to press his mouth to her throat.

"Danny!" Lindsay gasped, her hands rising to clutch at his biceps as he nuzzled at the sensitive skin of her neck. "We've gotta… umm…"

He silenced her half-hearted protests with a mind-numbing kiss that rocked her to the core and made her realise just how much he'd held back on her in the past few weeks. He'd always been generous with the physical affection, but had still kept it within certain limits of propriety – limits that he apparently was now more than ready to cross.

"Pack a bag," he instructed gruffly as he abruptly released her and stepped back.

"A b-bag?" she stuttered, her brain refusing to function beyond basic vocabulary.

"You're staying at my place tonight," he told her before he turned on his heel and left the room.

Lindsay's insides turned liquid before a spark of doubt brought her scattered senses back to order. Stay the night with him? She wasn't sure she was entirely ready for that yet. She wanted them to re-ignite that part of their relationship, but to go from zero to a hundred in the space of one therapy session was a little too much for her to handle. She'd never been one to jump into a sexual relationship and just because Danny was her husband didn't mean that he was an exception to that rule. Their time together in Montana had been a one-off experience in many respects. She agreed with what he'd told Samantha that afternoon in therapy – while it had been what they had both needed at the time, it hadn't been right for them to resume a regular sex life without properly addressing what had gone wrong between them in the first place.

Tugging on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved top, she pulled on a pair of high-heeled boots, and then packed a bag with clean underwear, her night-clothes plus a toothbrush and various other toiletries. She didn't have to stay over, she reasoned, but there was no harm in seeing how things went, was there? Danny wouldn't push her into anything she wasn't ready for, she trusted him wholeheartedly on that. Being prepared for all eventualities wasn't such a bad idea therefore.

After pulling a brush through her hair and applying a fresh coat of gloss to her lips, she picked up her overnight bag and went to join Danny in the living room. He was standing with his back to her, looking out the window with his hands thrust in his jeans' pockets. She could feel the tension radiating in waves from him from across the room.

"Are you okay?" she enquired softly, noting how he startled at the sound of her voice.

"Umm yeah, I…" He shook himself out of his reverie and turned to face her. "I don't want to rush this," he said.

"But…" she prompted.

"I love you, Lindsay, and I want you so…" He threw her a sheepish smile "It's a bit of a lesson in self-control right now if you want to know the truth," he told her ruefully.

"Especially now we've got the professional go-ahead, you mean?" she said.

He smiled. "Yeah – it's like dangling a tasty treat just out of reach, and you know I'm not good with things I'm denied." He glanced at her bag. "You don't have to stay over," he said. "That was presumptive of me."

"I think I can overlook it," Lindsay told him with a smile as she crossed the room to join him.

"Look, I want to be with you tonight, Danny," she assured him, slipping her hand into his and squeezing his fingers lightly. "Maybe not in every respect, but I have no objection to fooling around a little."

"Second or third base?" he asked with a cheeky grin and she thumped him lightly on the chest in retaliation, making him chuckle.

Bringing their joined hands to his lips, he kissed the backs of her fingers. "Come on, let's go," he said, solicitously taking her bag from her grasp and slinging it over his right shoulder. "My parents will be wondering where I've gotten to, and who knows what secrets Lucy'll spill without me there to curb her enthusiasm."

"You hold our daughter in such high regard, don't you?" Lindsay observed acerbically as they headed out the door.

Danny grinned. "I just know her," he said, as they made their way down the corridor to the elevator. "Her mouth runs away with itself before her brain connects sometimes."

Lindsay smiled. "I think that's the nature of a four year old, Danny," she told him. "And you can't hold her responsible for that."

"I don't," he said, reaching out and punching the glowing 'down' button with the pad of his thumb. "I just know that I have to be vigilant for the inevitable faux pas because of it."

Lindsay laughed as the elevator doors slid open, and Danny placed the palm of his hand into the small of her back to guide her inside. Reaching around her, he hit the button for the ground floor before pulling her back into the circle of his embrace as the elevator jerked and began its descent. She sighed and relaxed back against him, closing her eyes and savouring the few short moments of quiet togetherness before they had to face the hustle and bustle of the outside world once again.

"I love you," she told him in a hushed tone.

His lips brushed her temple. "Ditto," he murmured quietly in her ear.

**OOOOOO**

_**Danny's apartment,**__** twenty minutes later...**_

"What you drawing there, honey?"

Rosa Messer leaned over her grand-daughter's shoulder to gaze down at the picture the little girl was constructing with a rainbow of wax crayons.

"That's me," Lucy told her, pointing to the smallest stick-figure she'd drawn with bright yellow hair and blue dots for eyes.

"That's Daddy," she added, indicating the figure to the left of the image she'd drawn of herself. The stick figure man had hair in spikes and the same blue dots for eyes.

"And that's Mommy," she finished, pointing to the figure on the right of the picture drawn with longish brown hair, brown dots for eyes and a ruby-red smile.

Rosa had to suppress her sigh. Her granddaughter had drawn the three people smiling and holding hands and was currently colouring in the round globe of the sun on what looked to be an idyllic, but sadly - wholly imaginary day.

"It's when we went to Coney Island," Lucy went on to inform her however, blowing a hole in that particular theory.

Rosa's eyebrows lifted in surprise. "Daddy and Mommy were both there?" she asked the little girl.

"Yes," Lucy nodded enthusiastically. "They're friends again now."

Rosa glanced over at her husband who shrugged his shoulders. "If it works for them," he remarked.

"Yes but…" Rosa broke off and looked meaningfully at Lucy. They shouldn't be giving the little girl false hope in her opinion.

The sound of the key in the lock distracted her attention then, and also prompted Lucy to abandon the drawing that she'd been so diligently working on without a second thought.

"It's Daddy!" she squealed, sliding down from her chair and running towards the door.

"Hey pumpkin!" Danny greeted her, dropping the bag he was holding and swinging her up into his arms. He planted a noisy kiss on her cheek. "How ya doin' today?"

"I'm good," she told him and then spied her mother in the doorway. "Mommy!" she beamed. "You're here too."

"Seems that way," Lindsay replied with a smile. She reached out to run her hand affectionately over her daughter's cap of silky blonde hair before standing on her tip-toes to kiss the little girl's offered lips.

Stepping around her husband and daughter, she then moved to greet her parents-in-law. "Hey Michael!" she said, lightly kissing his cheek. "Rosa." She smiled hesitantly at her mother-in-law, bracing herself for the plethora of questions that were sure to follow.

Rosa was surprisingly reticent however, accepting a hug and then frowning at her in motherly disapproval. "You're too thin," she declared.

Lindsay laughed a little nervously and then looked over at Danny for support. He set Lucy back on her feet and then squatted down to speak to her at eye-level. "Sweetheart, why don't you go and play in your room for a little while?" he suggested.

Lucy studied him gravely. "Are you going to tell the secret?" she asked him astutely.

He smiled at her. "There's no hiding things from you, is there Miss Smarty-Pants?" he teased, poking her in the tummy and making her giggle. "But," he added in a serious tone, "It's grown-up talk and not for little girl's ears so I need you to be a good girl and go and play okay?"

"Okay," Lucy nodded solemnly. "I build a fairy-princess castle," she announced as she obediently scampered off towards her room.

Shrugging out of his jacket, Danny took Lindsay's coat from her and hung the two garments up on the coat-stand near the door before suggesting to his curious parents that they all sit down.

"Is there something wrong?" Rosa asked before either Danny or Lindsay could say anything. "Are you ill?" She looked at her daughter-in-law in genuine distress.

Touched by her mother-in-law's clear concern for her welfare, Lindsay shook her head. "No, no, Rosa, I… I'm fine. I've lost some weight recently, but that's just because I've been having a hard time coming to terms with things… but I'm okay now, I promise you."

Danny nodded in agreement. "She looks a lot better than she did a few weeks ago," he told his Mom.

"So something _is_ wrong?" Rosa pressed.

"No Ma, look…" Danny paused and reached out to take Lindsay's hand in his. "We've done a lot of talking over the past couple of months and have decided to put the divorce on hold. We want to try and work things out."

Rosa stared at her son, open-mouthed. "But you said there wasn't any possibility of that."

"I know I did, but things have changed. Certain things have come to light that have given us a fresh perspective on our situation."

"What things?" his mother demanded.

"That's between me and Lindsay," Danny said firmly, not wanting to divulge too many details. "All you need to know is that we're doing everything in our power to repair the damage to our marriage. We've been having couple's counselling for a few weeks now, and it's all going really well so far."

"And what have you told Lucy?" Rosa asked him.

"That Daddy and Mommy have decided to be boyfriend and girlfriend, and that if all goes well then we'll go back to being husband and wife again. She knows that there are no guarantees of that though."

"She's four, Danny," his father pointed out. "You can't stop her from expecting a happy ending."

Danny sighed. "We know that, Dad, but it'd be impossible to keep it secret from her too, so we don't really have much choice, do we? Neither of us has made this decision lightly, you know. We love Lucy too much to decide something like this on a whim. We're both one hundred percent committed to making this work, but we're not prepared to make any promises about the outcome just yet."

"And your parents know about this too?" Rosa asked Lindsay.

"Yes," Lindsay answered, choosing not to expand on the how and when. That would mean revealing a little too much personal detail for her liking, and would inevitably be the cause of some resentment on Rosa's part about being kept in the dark for so long too.

Danny squeezed her fingers in silent gratitude for her discretion. "Look, I know this has come a bit out of the blue, but we need your support on this, Mom," he said. "We've given it a lot of thought and decided that this is the right thing for us. It might seem like a rash decision over a year on from when we originally split, but I think we needed that time apart to help us see things more clearly."

Rosa nodded in approval. "Well, it's about time," she said. "Young people give up on marriage too easily these days if you ask me. It's all these celebrities jumping into bed with each other at the drop of a hat, and then paying some attorney through the nose to get them out of it when things don't turn out quite how they thought they would. It used to be that marriage was for life rather than until the gloss has worn off."

Danny exchanged a glance with Lindsay, not commenting on the familiar refrain. He thought his mother had a fair point in many respects, but he'd seen too many abuse victims trapped in violent marriages to be wholly in agreement with her philosophy. The lessened stigma attached to divorce had its good points as well the bad in his opinion.

"Well, we're not giving up," he assured his mother. "We got lost in the wilderness there for a while, but we're trying our best to get things back on track. We need some proper space to do that though, okay? I know you only want the best for us, but you've got to let us do this at our own pace, all right?"

"What exactly are you trying to say?" Rosa asked, her question tinged with an underlying note of indignation.

"Just don't get too excited," Danny said, not wanting to offend his mother, but also needing to set some ground-rules. "Maybe you should think about Lindsay as my new girlfriend rather than my wife. Inviting us to dinner every so often is fine, but no big family gatherings just yet, okay? We need to keep things as low key as possible until we're sure of where we're at – for Lucy's sake as much as our own. We don't want to build up her expectations and then dash them again. You understand that, don't you?"

Rosa's lips thinned, but she nodded her agreement as he'd known she would. He hadn't come top of his class at the Academy through lack of brains after all. Lucy was the ace in the pack and he'd shamelessly played her – and not felt the slightest guilt about it either. Obtaining him and Lindsay the breathing space they needed to rebuild their marriage in their own time was all that mattered right now. If his mother's nose was put out of joint for a while because of it then so be it.

"If you do want to do something to help," he continued before she had the chance to say anything more. "You could take Lucy for the night tonight. Me and Linds could really use some time alone right now and babysitters are hard to come by…"

"… Not to mention a drain on the personal finances," he finished, laying it on thick. "I'll cook us all dinner as I said I would, but if you could have Lucy to stay over at your place we'd be eternally grateful."

The look he shot his mother was calculatingly pleading, and Lindsay wasn't sure where he'd dredged up the nerve from. After all, Rosa was no fool. She loved her boy, but she wouldn't be blind to his blatant manipulation. Sure enough, she returned her son's look with a steely one of her own before reaching out to affectionately cuff him upside the head.

"Don't think I don't know the game you're playing, mister," she said, pointing an imperious finger at him even as her eyes danced with suppressed laughter.

Danny grinned at her. "But you're not going to say no, are ya?" he countered cheekily.

Michael Messer chuckled at that. "You sure know how to push your luck, son," he remarked with a wry shake of his head.

"Only because she's a marshmallow when it comes to Lucy," Danny answered.

"God tested my faith when he gave me two tearaway boys to raise, but he rewarded my perseverance with that sweet little girl that's for sure," Rosa agreed.

"Hey!" Danny protested indignantly and Lindsay laughed.

"You so asked for that," she told him, and then looked over at Rosa. "It's okay if you can't take her," she said. "A few hours to ourselves would be nice, but it's not essential."

"Nonsense!" Rosa said briskly. "We'd love to have her. That's what family is for, isn't it?"

Lindsay's face relaxed into a grateful smile. "Thanks," she said quietly.

Rosa reached out and patted her hand. "You're welcome, honey."

As if on cue, Lucy came running back into the room. "Are you finished talking yet?" she demanded impatiently, placing her hands on her hips and frowning at them in childish displeasure. "Cus I been playing on my own _for-ever!_" She dramatically threw her little arms out wide to emphasise this fact.

Danny shot his mother a meaningful look. "What was it you were saying about sweet little girls?" he enquired airily.

**OOOOOO**

The following morning, Danny woke early, blinking in the dim dawn light as he shook off the last remnants of sleep.

Turning his head on the pillow, he was greeted by the sight of Lindsay sleeping peacefully beside him, her cheek resting in her upturned palm and her breathing slow and steady. Without his contacts, her features appeared hazy and indistinct so he reached out a hand to retrieve his spare glasses from the nightstand so that he could observe her properly. He wanted to know whether his efforts last night had had the desired effect.

Initial evidence was positive. She looked relaxed and peaceful – the almost permanent lines of tension that had been etched across her forehead in recent months all but gone. Whether that was simply because she was lost in slumber, or as a direct result of his attentions the previous evening he didn't know, but he liked to think it was the latter.

It had all been very impromptu, but he thought he'd handled things with appropriate aplomb. Lindsay had been outwardly nervous around him – a situation that he'd found remarkably endearing even as he cursed her ex for making her believe she was so much less than she was. A little candlelight, some mood music and a chilled glass of white wine had taken the edge of those nerves however, and she'd relaxed enough to be receptive to what he'd had in mind.

They'd not made love, although he didn't think she'd have refused if he'd asked. While his body had craved, his heart and mind had held back, accepting that it wasn't yet the right time for them to cross that line. He didn't want it to just be about physical need, you see, he wanted her to know that when they shared themselves with each other in that way that it was about so much more than that. Until she'd truly accepted that she was beautiful in eyes however, that wasn't going to happen. It was going to take a little time and patience on his part to convince her that she was all he ever wanted and a whole lot more besides.

Still, last night had been a promising start, even if he had ended up confusing her with his choice of entertainment. She'd clearly been expecting him to pounce on her like some hormonal teenager, but he prided himself on having a little more finesse than that. The Messer Magic had been working overtime even if he did say so himself, and he was more than satisfied with the results of his endeavours.

Smiling inwardly to himself, he leaned over and kissed her hair and then carefully slid out from under the covers, taking care not to disturb her as he rose. Grabbing some clean boxers from the top drawer and a pair of jeans from his closet, he padded through into the bathroom to take his morning shower.

Some time later, Lindsay woke to the sound of someone clattering about in the kitchen. Pushing a messy tangle of hair out of her eyes, she absently reached out and smoothed her hand over the empty mattress beside her. The sheets were cool to the touch meaning that she'd been alone in the bed for a while. Stretching her limbs like a cat awakening from a nap, she let out an invigorating yawn, noting that her muscles were loose and limber - and for once not wracked by the ever-present tension that her depression inflicted on her physical body without her being fully aware of it.

Last night had been nothing like she'd expected and considerably more than she hoped. She wasn't sure how he'd done it, but Danny seemed to have had an almost sixth sense about what she needed from him, and had supplied it in spades. She hadn't made out like that in years – in fact she didn't think she'd made out like that ever. Any such encounters during her teenage years had been fraught with a certain amount of hormone-filled urgency, whereas, as an adult, the graduation from kissing to sex had been the main aim of the game.

Even with Danny - who she'd made wait for several weeks before she'd finally slept with him - it had never been like that before. Their early physical encounters had been confined to steamy goodnight kisses at the door, both of them knowing that if they took it any further than that then they wouldn't be able to stop – as their passionate night on the pool table had ultimately proved.

Thinking of their first ever night together brought another fact home to her – yes, she'd been buoyed by a certain amount of alcohol-fuelled confidence, but she hadn't been afraid. She'd wanted Danny and was certain of his want for her. Simon's comments about her abilities in that area hadn't played any major part in that night. Any waver in confidence she'd experienced had been instantly swept away when Danny had turned the tables on her, taking charge of the encounter that she'd so boldly initiated and leaving her in no doubt about the veracity of his desire for her.

Last night though… last night was different. Danny had… well, savoured her is what he'd done, expressing his want for her in an entirely different way than before. As his fingers had stroked through her hair and his body had rested lightly against hers, he'd indulged her in long, slow drugging kisses until her head span and her body craved for more. She'd slid her hands under his t-shirt wanting to feel the smooth warmth of his skin under her fingertips as his mouth moved insistently over hers. When her hands had begun to wander further however, Danny had gently pulled back, stilling their movement with a shake of his head…

_**The previous evening…**_

"It's okay," Lindsay assured him. "I'm okay."

"I know you are," Danny replied, smiling at the slightly frantic tone of her voice, "But one step at a time, okay?"

He sat up, depriving her of the comforting warmth of his body-heat. "How about a bath?" he suggested.

Lindsay's brow furrowed in confusion as she pushed herself up into a sitting position. "T-together?" she stuttered uncertainly.

She wasn't sure she was ready to be that openly naked with him yet. Her body-confidence was still very low and her weight loss only added to that. Sticking-out ribs was not a look Danny favoured – he'd said as much to her in the past – and she was embarrassed that she'd allowed herself to get into that state. The weight was creeping back on, but only very slowly. She really wasn't happy with the way she looked at the moment and so wasn't comfortable about the idea of being so exposed to him.

Danny's low chuckle calmed her fears however. "No," he said. "I don't think my willpower is _that_ good; I just thought it would help you relax is all. You're still very on edge and it's not good for you. Maybe a warm bubble bath and a massage will help you get rid of some of the tension that you've been carrying around with you twenty-four-seven."

"A m-massage?" Lindsay's eyes widened at that. "You know how?" It would certainly be a new experience for them if he did.

Danny laughed at her openly dubious expression. "I have hidden talents, babe," he assured her with a wicked twinkle in his eyes.

"Since when?" Lindsay asked, still not entirely convinced by the idea.

"Since I dated a masseuse around twelve years ago," he explained. "It didn't last long – she was too kooky for me – but it wasn't a complete waste of my time because I learnt a little about the art of sensual massage in the process."

"So, like, you have all the equipment?" Lindsay asked him. "The oils and everything?"

"Nah!" Danny shook his head. "But we can improvise. You brought that lotion you use with you, didn't you? The one that smells all fruity?"

Lindsay shot him an incredulous look. "I didn't think men paid attention to stuff like that," she remarked.

"You live with someone long enough, you learn a thing or two about their habits," Danny told her. "It helps that that particular habit is so goddamn sexy of course."

Lindsay giggled. "Me using body lotion is sexy?"

"Oh yeah," Danny said with a salacious gleam in his eye. "It's the reason your skin is so soft to touch and why it always smells so damn good too. Plus there's the way it's applied..."

He left the statement hanging, allowing her to fill in the blanks. "You have a dirty mind, Detective Messer," she told him.

"You're only just figuring that one out?" Danny shot back, and then laughed and took her hand in his. "Come on, I'll draw your bath for you."

"So - you mentioned bubbles?" Lindsay said, as they made their way down the hallway to the bathroom.

"I did," Danny returned, as he pushed open the door and flipped on the overhead light.

"You have secret bubble bath stash?" she teased.

"Not exactly," Danny said, as he crossed to the mirrored cupboard and pulled it open.

Lindsay defensively wrapped her arms around her middle as an unwelcome thought suddenly occurred to her. "Rachel left it, didn't she?" she said.

Given the tension that had unexpectedly entered the room, Danny was glad that he'd had the presence of mind to rid his apartment of all traces of his ex-girlfriend's presence. While they hadn't been living together, inevitably a number of her possessions had found their way into his home.

"No," he said, as he reached down the bottle of bubble bath from the top shelf. "It's Lucy's. She likes her princess bubbles." He showed her a bottle decorated with cartoon characters and filled with a vivid pink liquid. He twisted the cap and took an experimental sniff. "Strawberry-scented, I think. Not very luxurious I know, but it'll do the trick."

Thinking it was sweet that he kept such items in his bathroom cabinet for their little daughter's use but knowing that she shouldn't really be surprised by it, Lindsay's tense expression relaxed into a smile. "Sorry," she softly apologised. "I'm still getting used to the whole idea of you and her…" She trailed off with a shrug.

"It'll take time," Danny said with quiet understanding before he turned to run her bath.

Switching on the faucets, he adjusted the temperature, and then added a generous glug of the bath foam to the stream of running water. After that, he left her to it, closing the door behind him with a soft click as he exited the room.

While her bath filled, Lindsay quickly disrobed and pinned her hair on top of her head with a couple of Lucy's barrettes that she discovered in a cupboard alongside the little girl's toothbrush and bath-toys. That done, she slid into the hot, foamy water with a contented sigh, surprised at just how welcome the prospect of a quiet, solitary bath was to her at present.

Twenty minutes later, with a good deal of her underlying anxiety melted away by the hot, soothing water and aromatic bubbles, she came out of the bathroom, dressed in just her panties and a short towel clutched to a close over her breasts. Following the faint sound of music, she walked the short distance down the hallway to Danny's bedroom and stood uncertainly in the doorway, taking in the masculine space before her.

The drapes at the window were a dark navy-blue and edged with a fringe of three cream-coloured stripes. The matching comforter had been removed from the bed and the lighter blue sheets underneath spread with a couple of large bath towels. Squat candles dotted various surfaces casting a dim flickering light, while low, bluesy music emanated from an MP3 docking station on the dresser.

Danny stood with his back to her, barefoot and dressed in a ubiquitous pair of grey sweatpants and a white wife-beater. Belatedly sensing her presence, he turned and smiled warmly at her. "Hey!" he greeted softly. "That feel better?"

Inexplicably tongue-tied, Lindsay could only nod her reply.

Danny gestured towards the bed. "Why don't you lie down?" he suggested, and then respectfully turned away, somehow sensing her reluctance to bare all before him.

Sucking in a deep breath, Lindsay let her towel slither to the floor before she lay down on her front and pillowed her head in her folded arms. The bed dipped as Danny climbed up onto the mattress beside her, straddling her lower thighs. She heard the sound of him squeezing a large globule of lotion into his palm, and then felt a slight chilling sensation as he dabbed small blobs of it over the expanse of her shoulders and back.

"Cold?" he asked when the action raised reactive goose-bumps on her flesh.

"Mmm," she replied with a non-committal nod as her stomach tied itself into knots of wary anticipation.

"Don't worry, I'll warm you up," he told her, the low, seductive timbre of his voice prompting a different kind of shiver to skitter down her spine. A nervous shimmer of laughter escaped her lips in response, followed by a soft gasp of awareness as his hands closed firmly over her shoulder-blades.

"Relax," he urged her in a quiet, melodious tone as he pressed his thumbs into the nape of her neck and kneaded away the knot of tension there. "Just take slow, deep breaths and allow yourself to let go," he advised.

Lindsay's flesh warmed as his fingers and palms carefully worked the lotion into her skin. Closing her eyes, she found herself drifting off into a world of pure sensation. The massage lacked a certain professional edge, but was somehow all the more potent for it.

These were her husband's hands on her skin after all. Surprisingly his touch wasn't particularly sexual; it was more worshipful than anything else. He concentrated his efforts on her back and shoulders for the most part, his fingers only very occasionally dipping into the curve of her waist, skimming over the swell of her hips and tantalisingly brushing the outside edge of her breasts. It was almost if he knew that anything more would be too much too soon, and yet she still wouldn't have said no if he'd pushed for more.

Her muscles slowly relaxed under his gentle ministrations. She could feel his touch right down to her very core. Her nerve-endings tingled where his fingers caressed, but while the effect was definitely sensual, she felt more loved and cherished than anything else.

"Feel good?" Danny's voice sounded in her ear, his breath ruffling her hair.

"Uh-huh," she confirmed dreamily, and sensed rather than saw his answering smile.

She gasped as he unexpectedly replaced his hands with his lips, kissing a delicate path down the length of her spine and back up again. Brushing her hair away from her neck, he then bent to nuzzle intimately at her throat. Raising herself up on her arms, Lindsay turned her head so that her lips met his in a slow, lingering kiss.

"I don't think that's in the instruction manual," she murmured against his mouth when their lips finally parted.

"Depends on what kind of establishment it is, I suppose," he quipped with typical irreverence before indulging her in another protracted kiss.

When their lips parted a second time, he shifted his weight off of her and climbed down from the bed, reaching out for her nightdress, which he'd laid over the back of the chair in front of the dresser earlier.

"Here," he said, handing the flimsy garment to her before once again turning his eyes away to give her some personal privacy while she sat up and pulled it on over her head.

Next, while Lindsay tossed the now redundant bath-towels aside, he bent to retrieve the comforter from the floor, and then tugged off his wife-beater and sweatpants before sliding into the bed besides her. Lindsay cuddled up close to him, resting her cheek against his chest and listening to the steady beat of his heart as he trailed his fingers up-and-down her arm.

She couldn't say what they'd talked about as they'd lain together in the flickering candle-light, but it wasn't important. What was important was the sense of renewed connection that conversation gifted them with. Words were frequently interrupted with long, slow heady kisses before Lindsay eventually drifted off to sleep. How long it was before Danny joined her in that peaceful dream-world, she didn't know. He must have risen to blow out the candles at some point, but she'd slept on oblivious, content in the knowledge that he would remain by her side until the sun rose the following morning…

_**Back in the present…**_

Pushing back the bedclothes, Lindsay pulled on the thin robe she'd brought with her from Stella's, and then ran a brush through her hair to remove the giant haystack that seemed to have taken up residence on top of her head during the night.

As she searched in her bag for her deodorant however, her fingers closed around the small bottle of her anti-depressant pills instead. Her heart thudded hard inside her chest. She'd managed to be discreet about taking her medication so far, but the morning dose had to be taken with food so she wasn't going to be able to do so this time around. At Stella's, she always prepared her own breakfast so it wasn't really a problem, but it sounded like Danny already had that particular task in hand.

She sighed. It wasn't as if she'd be able to hide it from him indefinitely so she may as well get it over with. Gripping the bottle tightly in her right palm, she headed for the kitchen.

"Hey, you're up!" Danny said, bending to kiss her good morning. "Sleep well?"

She nodded. "Yeah, better than I have in a long time actually."

"It's my magic fingers," he told her, wiggling them suggestively at her and making her laugh in spite of herself.

"I figured we'd just have a quick snack now and grab a proper brunch together a little later," he went on. "I don't have to be at work until noon so we should have plenty of time."

Lindsay nodded. "Sounds good," she said. "Umm – can I borrow your car to go pick up Lucy from your parents?"

"Sure – the keys are in the dish by the door," he told her. "So what do you fancy? I've got bagels and cream cheese, or I think I could probably whip up some eggs?"

"A bagel's fine," she replied. "As long as there's coffee to go with it."

"Freshly brewed," he said, nodding at the percolator glugging away on the counter.

Finally screwing up the appropriate courage, Lindsay deliberately set the bottle of pills down on the counter. "I could use a glass of water too," she said a little shakily.

"Coming up," he told her breezily before he noticed the embarrassed flush of her cheeks. "Hey!" he said, reaching over to take her hand in his. "It's all right."

Lindsay's eyes filled. "It doesn't feel like it. It feels like I'm admitting a weakness; that I can't cope."

"But you're coping better now, right?" Danny said with some concern. "Because if you're not…"

"I'm doing okay," she assured him. "I just find this difficult. I always have. I know the medication helps, but I don't want to admit to needing it. It's stupid, but it's the way I feel."

"It's not stupid if it's the way you feel," Danny told her, "But I don't want you to be uncomfortable about taking your medication around me. I wouldn't ever judge you for it, you know that. I'm on your side, no matter what okay?"

"Pinkie swear?" she enquired with a decidedly lop-sided smile.

"Pinkie swear," he assured her, and then purposely changed the subject, not wanting to give the act more credence than it warranted. If she was going to be comfortable about taking her medication in front of him then he needed to treat it like a normal, everyday occurrence, which is exactly what he intended to do.

"So," he said as he split a blueberry bagel in half and popped it into the toaster. "What are my two favourite girls up to today?

_**To be**__** continued…**_

_**A/N2:**_ _Sorry about the rather abrupt ending, but this chapter was getting so long, I had to end it somewhere. It leads straight into the first scene of the next chapter, which has a current working title of 'Mommy and Me.' That'll give you something to speculate on while I finish writing it! :-)_

_Till next time then… CharmedBec x_


	35. Mommy and Me

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes****: **Okay so the last few chapters have necessarily focused on Danny and Lindsay's therapy sessions, which means that Lucy has been in the background for the most part. I think it's time for her to come out of hiding therefore. Also, I wanted to write some Lindsay/Lucy centric scenes because they don't show much of that on the show. They're much more focused on Danny as a father instead of Lindsay as a Mom. I'll admit Danny/Lucy is super cute, but I still think they're missing a trick...

Anyway, enough of my rambling; please read on and enjoy…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 35 – Mommy and Me**_

_**Staten Island**__**, later the same day…**_

Arriving at her in-laws' house around midday, Lindsay pulled into the kerb and shut off the engine, but didn't immediately get out of the car. Instead, she sat in the driver's seat for a while, taking some time to gather her thoughts before she went to collect her daughter from inside. Today, she would have to face Danny's parents alone and she wasn't quite sure what to expect. She and Rosa had always had a good relationship in the past, but considering that it had been Lindsay who had instigated the divorce proceedings the previous year; she wasn't entirely convinced that that would hold true anymore.

Of course, her mother-in-law still believed her son was wholly responsible for their split so she was probably worrying over nothing. This rather unjustified proportioning of blame remained a niggling source of consternation for Lindsay however. It just didn't sit comfortably with her innate sense of right and wrong. She'd said as much to Danny over brunch that morning, but he'd been infuriatingly blasé about the whole thing...

_**Earlier that morning…**_

"Whether I technically broke my marriage vows or not is beside the point, Lindsay," he told her around a mouthful of crisply-fried bacon. "In the end, all our problems stem from what happened with Rikki."

"Not all of them," Lindsay protested as she took a sip of her orange juice.

"But if that had never happened," he said.

"Then I'm not even sure whether we would have gotten married," she finished for him.

Danny paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. "How do you mean?" he asked, his forehead crinkling into a troubled frown.

"I just…" Lindsay stopped and gnawed at her bottom lip, and then took a deep breath and rushed on before she lost the nerve to voice what she was thinking. "Look, let's be honest here, okay? It's that which made you truly commit to us, isn't it? Do you think you would have allowed our relationship to develop into something more serious if we'd carried on as we were?"

If he was brutally honest with himself, Danny couldn't be absolutely certain, but seeing as Lindsay was as much the woman he'd fallen in love with before Rikki as she was after, he couldn't see why not. It might have taken him a little more time to come to terms with his feelings if it hadn't been for that slip-up, but he didn't think he'd have let Lindsay go even so. He supposed he would never know for sure, but it didn't really matter now in any case.

"I don't know," he said, "But we are where we are, so it's not really an issue now, is it?"

"But your Mom thinking what she thinks is," Lindsay re-iterated stubbornly. "It's not right, Danny - that's all I'm saying."

Danny sighed. "Look, she's just about forgiven me now anyway," he said, "So why rock the boat? It's only going to open an unnecessary can of worms. Nothing can change what I did - whether I was unfaithful before or after our marriage makes no difference now."

"I guess I'm just not comfortable with her continuing to think that our split was entirely your fault," Lindsay said.

"But how comfortable would you be about her knowing every intimate detail?" Danny rejoined somewhat maddeningly.

Lindsay shook her head in disbelief. "Doesn't it bother you at all?" she demanded in exasperation.

"What? That my Mom thinks I'm an adulterer, you mean?" Danny shrugged; the nonchalance in the gesture not entirely genuine. "Yes," he eventually confessed, "But I figure it's no more than I deserve. I may not have had a ring on my finger, but it's not as if I didn't commit the crime she's sentencing me for, is it?"

A metaphorical light-bulb went on inside Lindsay's head at that. "So you're deliberately punishing yourself, is that it?"

Danny looked away from her too-knowing gaze. "Perhaps," he admitted frankly. "Maybe if I do the necessary time, I can find a way to forgive myself for the pain I caused."

"I've forgiven you," Lindsay told him then, realising that it was something that needed to be said. This past week had been a maelstrom of see-sawing emotions for her, but if there was one truth that had come out of it, it was that.

Danny remained unconvinced however. "Have you?" he enquired, his tone doubtful. "Truly? Hand on heart?"

Lindsay nodded. "Yes," she assured him earnestly, reaching out for his hands across the table-top.

"Perhaps it doesn't always seem like it," she went on when his hands closed around hers in return, "But I have, I swear. Forgiving you for hurting me is not really the issue anymore, Danny. It may have been once, but I think we're past that now. Trusting you to be there for me in the future... well, that's what I'm having a little more difficulty with, but even that's not all down to you, you know. There are so many other factors that affect the way I feel in that respect."

Swallowing hard to get rid of the sudden lump that had arisen in his throat, Danny tightened his fingers around hers. "Thank you," he said, his voice a little croaky.

"For what?" she asked, confused by this public display of emotion from her usually taciturn other half.

Blinking back the insistent prickle of tears, Danny shot her a rather lop-sided smile. "For saying the words," he replied. "I don't think I realised how much I needed to hear them until now."

Lindsay's gaze dropped from his face to their joined hands. "It's not everything you want though, is it?" she said despondently.

"No," he agreed, sliding a finger under her chin and bringing her gaze back to his. "But 'I forgive you' is a big deal, Lindsay, so it's a damn good start. I know that 'I trust you' is going to take more time, but this means a lot so thank you… Just… thank you."

He lowered his gaze then as the tears finally escaped despite his best efforts to keep them at bay.

"Danny…" Lindsay murmured, quickly moving out of her seat and around to his side of the table so that she could put her arms around him.

Danny buried his face against her shoulder, struggling to contain his wayward emotions. His breath hitched once as she stroked her hand over his hair, but then he seemed to regain his composure a little. Lifting his head, he cupped her face in his palms and kissed her fervently, a sense of gratitude more than passion driving his actions, but not lessening their emotional impact in the slightest.

_**Back in the present…**_

In a vain attempt to focus her mind back on the task at hand, Lindsay determinedly climbed out of the car and headed up the driveway to the front door. Try as she might though, she couldn't stop her thoughts from drifting back to that earlier conversation with her husband.

As much as Danny had needed to hear the words, she'd needed to witness his reaction to them. The palpable relief on his face, not to mention the sheer strength of the emotion expressed, all helped to lay a stronger foundation of trust for them to build on. In the past twenty-four hours, she felt as if they'd turned yet another important corner in their journey of redemption. Moreover, with each such corner turned, the load they carried got a whole lot easier to bear.

Coming to a halt on the front stoop, she pressed the door-bell and smiled as her daughter's voice sounded as clear as a song-bird from the inside. "Mommy's here!" the little girl squealed in obvious delight.

A few moments later, Rosa opened the door with a welcoming smile. "Hello Lindsay, come on in," she said, waving her daughter-in-law inside. "I'm just giving Lucy her lunch."

"You didn't have to do that," Lindsay said, as she stepped over the threshold and shrugged out of her thick, winter coat.

"Danny said something about taking you out for brunch so I figured you wouldn't be hungry," her mother-in-law said, as she took Lindsay's coat from her and hung it up in the hall closet. "It was no trouble for me to whip up a bowl of pasta – I was fixing something for Michael and myself anyway."

"You spoke to Danny?" Lindsay queried as she followed Rosa down the hallway towards the kitchen.

The older woman nodded. "Yes, earlier this morning," she replied. "He rang to check on Lucy like he always does when she's staying over with us."

Lindsay had to suppress a guilty sigh at that. Danny did that all the time, she knew - called morning and night when his daughter wasn't in his care. It wasn't that he didn't trust whoever was looking after her; it was more his way of staying connected to his little girl even when he was forced to be apart from her.

She'd stolen that sense of security from him by her too hasty pursuit of a legal separation and it made her feel ashamed to think of it now. At the time she'd honestly believed that she was being more than reasonable with the amount of access she was giving him, but the pure fact of the matter was that Lucy spent significantly more time with her than she did with Danny. He no longer got to see his daughter every day as he had done for the first few years of her life, whereas Lindsay rarely went twenty-four hours without having at least some contact with their little girl.

Still, things were improving in that respect. In the past few weeks, Danny had been a much bigger part of her and Lucy's daily lives than he had been for over a year now. She knew there was still a mountain left for them to climb, but she felt as if they were securely tethered to each other now. The possibility of either of them changing their minds and back-tracking was no longer a major concern to her. They knew where they were going and had their eyes firmly focused on their eventual destination. It was just going to take a little more time to get there, that's all.

"Hey-o Mommy," Lucy greeted happily when Lindsay followed Rosa into the cluttered but homely kitchen. The little girl sat in a bolstered chair with a bowl of pasta on the table in front of her and a rim of tomato sauce decorating her lips like badly applied lipstick.

"Hey sweetie!" Lindsay returned, bending to kiss the top of the pre-schooler's head. "Have you been a good girl for Nonna?"

"Uh-huh," Lucy nodded confidently. "We made cookies," she announced, waving her hand at the counter where the cookies were laid out on a wire-rack to cool. "They be ready to eat yet?" she asked her grandmother hopefully, her blue eyes effortlessly guileless.

"As angelically innocent as her father," Rosa commented to Lindsay, who laughed.

"Oh, I think he's still a little ahead of the game," she returned with a grin.

Rosa smiled, and then turned her attention back to the waiting Lucy. "As long as Mommy says it's ok, you can have one for dessert," she informed the little girl. "But we'll pack up the rest for you to take home with you, all right?"

"You an' Grandpa can keep some too if you like," Lucy offered magnanimously. "Mommy says I have to 'member to share."

"Mommy does," Lindsay concurred, "And she also says you have to eat up all your pasta before you can have that cookie, okay?"

"Okay," Lucy agreed and promptly speared another sauce-coated spiral with her fork to show willing.

The door to the kitchen from the outside opened then, and Michael Messer stepped over the threshold in search of sustenance. "Oo cookies!" he said, rubbing his hands together with exaggerated glee.

"Me and Nonna made 'em," his granddaughter informed him.

"Is that so? Well, they're going to be super, extra special delicious with all that added Lucy magic, aren't they?"

Lucy giggled. "You're silly, Grandpa."

"You mean you haven't got fairy-dust in your fingertips? Well, I am disappointed."

Lucy giggled again and Rosa rolled her eyes. "If you've ever wondered where Danny gets it from, now you know," she remarked dryly to Lindsay before turning back to her husband. "There's pasta in the pot there," she told him, indicating the covered saucepan on the stove. "Help yourself if you're hungry."

"You gotta eat it all up before you can have a cookie," Lucy interjected. "Mommy says so."

Michael grinned. "Ahh well, if Mommy says so then I guess I'd better do as I'm told, huh?" he said, winking playfully at Lindsay who shot him a faint smile in return.

Lucy nodded seriously. "You don't want a time-out."

"That I don't," he agreed soberly, even as his eyes twinkled with suppressed mirth.

Taking a bowl from the counter, he scooped a generous ladleful of pasta into it, and then took it to the table and sat down next to his granddaughter to enjoy his lunch.

"How about we go upstairs and pack up Lucy's things?" Rosa said to Lindsay as her husband proceeded to sprinkle grated parmesan and black pepper over his food. "Michael will keep an eye on Lucy, won't you, dear?"

Michael shot his wife a slightly quizzical look, but nodded his agreement in spite of that. "Sure thing, honey."

Lindsay's stomach pitched. She wasn't stupid; Rosa clearly wanted to speak to her in private. She couldn't exactly refuse the request without coming across as extraordinarily rude though, so there wasn't much else she could do but follow her mother-in-law upstairs to the small guest bedroom.

"I wanted to thank you," Rosa said, as she sat down on the bed and began to fold Lucy's discarded clothes from the day before.

"For what?" Lindsay asked, bending down to gather up the various scattered toys from the floor.

"For giving Danny a second chance," her mother-in-law replied. "I know he can be difficult sometimes, but he's a good boy really – and he does love you, you know. This Rachel thing was just an aberration. She turned his head when he should have been focusing on his family. He knows that now and it won't happen again, I'm sure of it. If there's one thing I can say confidently about my son, it's that he usually learns from his mistakes." Her expression darkened. "Unlike his brother who just kept repeating them until it killed him," she finished bleakly.

Lindsay didn't know what to say. On the one hand, here was the perfect opportunity for her to set her mother-in-law straight about the circumstances of her and Danny's break-up. On the other, she couldn't help recalling her husband's words of caution from earlier that morning.

'_Why rock the boat? It's only going to open an unnecessary can of worms.'_

She sighed and settled for a halfway house. "Rachel wasn't the reason for our split," she told Rosa quietly. "She came after. I'm not saying it didn't hurt, but… well, she wasn't the reason, that's all."

Rosa nodded. "Danny said as much a few weeks ago, but it didn't help matters, did it?"

"Rosa look…" Lindsay stopped, brushing a weary hand across her face before continuing. "I don't want to live my life plagued with 'what if's' okay? What's done is done. Me and Danny – we've put it behind us and we're trying to move on. It's not been easy, far from it, but we're together and we're working our way back towards being happy again, and that's all that really matters to us right now."

"You should forgive him, you know," she urged, her brown eyes a little over-bright with the emotions she was struggling to suppress. "If I can find it in my heart to do so then so can you."

Rosa sighed. "I'm just so angry that he nearly ruined the best thing that ever happened to him," she said. "When he married you… well, my boy truly became a man, and to see him back-track like that was just too much to take."

Except he hadn't really back-tracked, Lindsay thought to herself. The extra maturity he'd gained by becoming a husband and father hadn't diminished. He may not have handled the trials and tribulations of marriage all that well – and had dived thoughtlessly into another relationship to assuage his pain over their split - but his heart had been in the right place even if his actions hadn't always been the perfect mirror of that.

"Life's too short for holding grudges, Rosa," she said. "It's time to let it go now. He doesn't say much, but I know it hurts him that the two of you have been at odds over this, and I don't want to be the cause of any more strife between the two of you. He didn't mess things up all on his own, you know. I have to take some responsibility for the way things turned out."

"He's lucky to have you. I hope he knows that."

"I think we both know how lucky we are," Lindsay said. "We've each hurt the other badly and yet we still want to be together despite that. That has to count for something, I think. We've already demonstrated that we have the ability to endure, we just have to prove that we can do what it takes to make each other happy."

"Well, I'll be praying for you both every day," Rosa told her sincerely.

Lindsay nodded. "Thank you," she returned with quiet appreciation. "We're grateful for every ounce of support we can get, believe me."

**OOOOOO**

An hour later, Lindsay let herself into Danny's apartment using the spare key he'd given her as they'd parted company earlier that morning.

Her eyes had welled up at the gesture, and she'd felt immediately guilty about being unable to return the compliment. "I need to ask Stella," she'd told him.

Danny had nodded in understanding. "Of course you do, don't worry about it," he'd said as he'd stooped to kiss her goodbye.

"Are we staying at Daddy's tonight?" Lucy asked as she followed her mother into the empty apartment.

"No, sweetie, not tonight," Lindsay told her. "We just had to stop by to drop off Daddy's car keys for him."

"Why?"

"Because he might need them later," Lindsay explained. "And we have our own car at home if we need one."

"So why did you come and get me in Daddy's car then?" Lucy enquired.

"And here's me thinking we were past the 'why?' stage," Lindsay muttered under her breath before lifting her voice to answer her daughter's question. "Because Mommy stayed with Daddy last night so it was easier to borrow his car than go all the way home to get ours."

"So are me an' you going to ride the subway home?" Lucy asked her.

Lindsay nodded. "Yes, but I thought we'd go to Central Park for a little while first. Would you like that?"

Lucy beamed at the prospect. "Yes pease, Mommy!" she said eagerly. "Can we have hot chocolate and marshmallows at a coffee shop too?"

Lindsay pursed her lips in contemplation. "You just had a cookie at Nonna's."

"But I'll eat all my dinner up, I promise," Lucy assured her earnestly. She clasped her hands together and bounced on her sneaker-clad feet. "Pease Mommy. Pease!"

"All your dinner, huh?" Lindsay said. "Even the vegetables?"

Lucy hesitated. "They won't be boc-lee?" she asked, a little frown line marring her otherwise baby-smooth forehead.

Lindsay had to bite back a laugh. How was a mother supposed to remain poker-faced against such adorable charm? "No," she said solemnly, "No broccoli, but I expect you to eat everything else."

Lucy nodded. "Okay," she agreed.

"And I think you and I should share the hot chocolate too," Lindsay added.

"But…" Lucy started and then stopped when she spotted her mother's pointedly raised eyebrow. "I guess that's okay," she decided.

Lindsay did laugh then. "Oh '_you_ _guess'_ do you?" she said, swooping down to tickle the little girl in the ribs.

Lucy squealed and tried to twist out her grasp. "No Mommy, no tickles, no tickles!"

"No tickles, huh?" Lindsay said, swinging the squirming little girl up into her arms. "How about kisses then?" she said, buzzing her lips against the soft skin of her daughter's neck. "Big, fat sloppy kisses!"

Lucy giggled, but nevertheless lifted her face and puckered up her lips for said kisses.

"I love you, baby girl," Lindsay declared as she planted a huge smacker on those cute little bowed lips.

Lucy cuddled in close, tightening her arms around her mother's neck. "I 'uv you too, Mommy," she returned.

"To the moon and back?" Lindsay enquired as she stroked a gentle hand over her daughter's silky hair.

"To the end of the ooniverse and back!" Lucy said, completing the familiar ritual.

"Well, that's all right then," Lindsay concluded, turning her head and pressing another kiss into her little girl's hair as she held her close. How had she ever thought her life was complete without her?

"Come on then," she said, forcibly extracting herself from the addictive embrace and setting her daughter back down on her feet. "We'd better get going or we won't get much time at Central Park."

Lucy slipped her little hand into hers as they headed out the door. "I like it when we have 'Mommy and Me' time," she asserted.

Lindsay's heart swelled at this freely given and honestly expressed sentiment. "Me too, baby," she said, smiling down into her little girl's upturned face. "Me too."

**OOOOOO**

_**Central Park, **__**an hour and a half later…**_

"Mommy! Mommy! Look! Look! Can we ride the go-round? Can we? Pease? Pease?" Jumping up and down in eager anticipation, Lucy pointed excitedly at the old-fashioned carousel like she'd never seen one before in her life.

"I thought you wanted hot chocolate and marshmallows?" Lindsay said. "We only have time for one so you need to make a choice. The carousel or the coffee shop - what's it to be?"

It was a definite dilemma, but it didn't take long to make a decision. Faced with the thrilling reality right in front of her eyes, Lucy, like any other small child of her age, went with the impulse rather than weighing up the pros and cons and making a well-considered decision.

"Can I give the go-round man the dollar?" she asked as she towed her mother towards the small queue waiting to ride. "And hold the ticket too?"

Lindsay laughed. "I think that can be arranged," she said, and then tightened her grip on her daughter's hand to stop her from mowing down everything and everyone in her eagerness to get to the carousel. "Slow down! It's not going anywhere."

"You're going to cause a traffic accident there, little lady," a strongly-accented voice observed from nearby.

"Uncle Bert!" Lucy exclaimed, momentarily distracted by the unexpected interruption. "Hi! Hi! Me and Mommy are going to ride the go-round. Do you want to come too?"

"Ahh," the salt-and-pepper-haired gentleman replied, eyeing the fairground ride with undisguised trepidation. "I don't think my old bones are really up to that anymore," he told the little girl.

"How about I just sit on that bench over there and watch?" he suggested before turning to smile at Lindsay in greeting. "Well, hello brown eyes – long time no see, huh?"

"Bert," Lindsay stood on her tip-toes to embrace the ruddy-faced pensioner. "How are you doing?"

"I think advancing age is finally taking its toll at long last," Bert replied drolly, "But I can't complain, I suppose."

Lindsay laughed, knowing he was only jesting. "It's good to see you," she said warmly.

Bert nodded. "You too," he returned as he eyed her speculatively. "So Danny tells me the two of you have decided to give your marriage another go…" he continued.

Lindsay's eyes widened. "He did?"

"Shouldn't he have done?" Bert enquired with a quizzical look.

"No, no, it's just…" Lindsay broke off, realising that she shouldn't really be surprised. Of course Danny would have confided in Bert. The two shared an unbreakable bond, one forged in the worst of circumstances, but guaranteed to last a lifetime because of that.

"We're just seeing how things go for now," she said.

"Well, how ever much he tried to deny it, he was never truly happy without you, you know," Bert claimed. "As I told Danny - you find the one, you hold on tight and you never let go, no matter what."

"So Rachel didn't make the grade then, huh?" Lindsay enquired; her tone light even if the emotions behind the query were still red raw.

Bert's eyes narrowed. "Curiosity killed the cat, girl," he admonished, but then reached out to cup her face in his roughened palm. "Don't you worry about that," he said gruffly. "The boy's got brains in his head, even if he doesn't always use 'em. You were always the one – knew it the first day I met ya. Told him so too."

Lindsay laughed even as she wanted to cry. "I can just imagine his response to that."

"Told me to stop goofin' around as I recall, but he didn't really mean it. First and only girl he ever brought to meet me formally, you were – gotta count for something that."

Lindsay smiled. "I guess it does," she agreed and then frowned as suspicion began to dawn. "You've got to have met some of his other girlfriends before me, you old rogue," she accused.

"Sure I did," Bert admitted easily, "But there's a difference between a chance meeting and a deliberate introduction, isn't there?"

Lindsay brushed a distracted hand through her hair. "The only one?" she asked a little incredulously. "Truly?"

"Truly," Bert confirmed with nod.

"But…"

"But what?"

"Nothing, it's just… it was before…" She trailed off with a shrug.

"Sometimes the heart knows what the head isn't ready to acknowledge," Bert told her wisely.

Could that really be true? Lindsay thought to herself a few minutes later as she rode the carousel with her daughter sitting astride the painted horse in front of her. Bert sat on the sidelines as promised, waving indulgently every time an excited Lucy called out to him.

Had Danny really singled her out as different right from the beginning? She struggled to believe that, but somewhere deep inside she could accept the possibility. Whether that meant as much as Bert was claiming it did, well she'd probably never know, would she?

Danny had been nervous when he'd taken her to meet Bert; that much was true. He'd wanted the older man to like her. It _mattered_ that he liked her. Her mind rewound to six and a half years earlier as she recalled the introduction to which Bert had previously alluded…

"_Umm, there's somewhere __I want to stop off before we head to the game," Danny said._

"_Oh?" __Lindsay replied absently as they descended the steps into the subway._

"_Yeah – err… __I wanted to drop in on a good friend of mine – Bert. He's umm… well, it's kind of a long story how we met. Anyway, he's been ill with flu recently so I wanted to check up on him… and… and he's been asking to meet you too."_

"_Meet me?" Lindsay teased, her eyes dancing merrily. "Why aren't you running for the hills? Doesn't that make me a bit too much like your 'official' girlfriend?" She crooked her fingers into quote marks._

"_You are my __official girlfriend," Danny replied a little defensively._

"_Oh and here's me thinking __I was just the woman you had rampant sex with."_

_He crossed his eyes at her. "You're not funny, you know."_

_Lindsay giggled. "And you're cute when you're sulking."_

_Danny ignored that. "So, will you come?"__ he demanded somewhat impatiently._

"_Sure, why not?" She grinned. "Do you think he'll approve?"_

"_I hope so."_

_That caught her attention. "Does it matter?" she asked._

_Danny scoffed. "Nah! But he's a good friend so I wouldn't want it to be awkward between the two of you."_

_Lindsay nodded. "I see." _

"_You see what?"_

"_You want him to like me." A wide smile was tugging at the corners of her lips._

"_And what's wrong with that?" Danny huffed._

"_Nothing, it's just… unexpected." She snared him around the waist and stood on her tip-toes to nibble seductively at his bottom lip. "I think I like it."_

"_And I think you drive me crazy," Danny told her before he cupped the back of her head in his hand and brought her mouth more fully against his…_

Although it had made her feel good, Lindsay hadn't placed any major significance on Danny taking her to meet Bert at the time. It had just seemed like a normal everyday occurrence to her. They were seeing each other exclusively so it was natural that he'd want her to meet his friends at some point.

Learning the truth about how Bert and Danny had first become acquainted however - now that had had a much more profound effect on her. But that was another story; one that belonged to another time and another place. It was a fateful meeting that had marked a significant moment in Danny's life, and a poignant revelation that had marked a major turning point in their own relationship too…

"Mommy?"

Lucy's questioning voice interrupted Lindsay's reverie then, and she shook off her internal musings to focus her attention on her daughter instead. "Yes sweetie?"

"Can we see if Uncle Bert wants to come home for dinner wiv us?" the little girl asked, twisting in her seat to look back at her mother as she spoke.

"Don't let go," Lindsay warned, quickly closing her hands around her daughter's to hold her in place and prevent any mishaps.

"That's a really nice thought, honey," she went on, "But maybe not today, okay? Tonight's not the best timing and we have to ask Stella if it's all right first too."

"Tell you what," she continued when Lucy's face fell. "How about we invite him round on a day when Daddy doesn't have to be at work? Then you and I can cook them both an extra special dinner of all their favourite things."

Lucy's expression immediately brightened at this suggestion. "Daddy likes Mommy's Key Lime Pie the best," she said. "He says it's his favourite dessert ever."

"He does?" Lindsay asked in some astonishment. It wasn't that she didn't know that Danny liked her cooking, but she was surprised that their daughter was so aware of it. "When did he tell you that?"

"When we went out to lunch for Uncle Flack's birfday," Lucy explained. "Uncle Flack ordered some, but Daddy had cherry cheesecake instead 'cus he said there ain't no better Key Lime Pie than Montana's."

She looked back over her shoulder at her mother again. "That's you," she said.

Lindsay laughed. "Yeah, that's me," she agreed.

"Why Daddy call you that?" her daughter asked curiously.

Lindsay smiled. Hmm… how to explain the inner workings of an adult male mind to an innocent four year old? "I don't know, I guess you'll have to ask your Daddy why," she said, feeling no compunction about dumping the responsibility for this one at Danny's door. He'd brought it on himself as far as she was concerned.

"Did he really say that though?" she couldn't help but double-check. Flack's birthday had been months ago now, way before there was even a hint of her and Danny getting back together, not to mention when his relationship with Rachel had been at its peak.

Lucy nodded. "Uncle Flack said he better not let Rachel hear him say so, but I don't see why not."

"Maybe he thought Rachel might be upset," Lindsay suggested.

"Why?" her daughter inevitably asked.

"Well, because Rachel was Daddy's girlfriend at the time..."

"And she wanted Daddy to think she was the best-ist at everything?" Lucy deduced.

Lindsay inclined her head. "Something like that, yes."

"Grown-ups are weird," Lucy decided.

Lindsay laughed. "Yeah, I guess we are sometimes," she admitted. "That's why you should never grow up. Daddy would definitely prefer it if you stayed his little girl forever that's for sure," she said as she pressed a loving kiss to the top of her daughter's honey-blonde head.

An hour later and Lucy's seemingly boundless energy was finally beginning to flag. On the subway home, Lindsay was immensely grateful when a business man in a pin-striped suit gave up his seat to let them sit down. Lucy had been whining about being picked up, but she was getting too heavy for Lindsay to be carrying her around like a toddler all the time.

Sitting down, she drew her daughter into her lap instead. Content now, Lucy nestled her head into the soft swell of her mother's breasts and stuck her thumb in her mouth. A feeling of overwhelming love consumed Lindsay as her daughter snuggled into her, but this was accompanied by a sharp pang of regret as well. When she'd been pregnant, she'd had no idea of the profound effect the tiny person growing inside of her would have on her priorities in life. Before, her career was the most important thing to her. Now… well, her job still mattered, but it was moments like this that gave her the greatest sense of personal fulfilment.

And there just weren't enough of them. She loved her job, but she wanted more afternoons like this. Afternoons that were purely set aside for 'Mommy and Me' time and nothing else. No household chores to see to, no calls from the Crime Lab to answer, just her and her little girl doing whatever made them happy and simply enjoying each other's company for the precious gift that it was. They were few and far between nowadays and Lindsay knew that her illness had made her a little too accepting of the situation over the past few months. If she structured her days better, she could make more time for her daughter, it would just take some careful planning that's all.

In the past, she'd been fanatical about using the maintenance money that Danny gave her for Lucy's personal needs only, but she could see now that she'd been overly strict about that. Using some of it to prop up her other household expenses so that she didn't have to work quite so many shifts wasn't an abuse of his financial support like she'd initially believed. It indirectly benefited her daughter because she would have her Mommy around more often and that could only be a good thing. Their regular babysitter, Shelley was great and Lucy loved her to pieces, but it wasn't the same.

Lindsay had been so determined to prove to Danny and everyone else that she could cope alone that she had ended up inadvertently sacrificing some of her valuable time with her daughter as a result. Well, no more, she decided. From tomorrow, things would change. Lucy would get more of the 'Mommy and Me' time she liked so much, because her Mom would do everything in her power to make it so.

She was lucky that she was financially stable enough to be able to make that choice. For many mothers it wouldn't even be an option. She was doing them - and herself - a great disservice by allowing her pride to get in the way of that. Of course now that she and Danny were no longer estranged, it made it a whole lot easier for her to swallow her pride and accept his financial help. Still, better later than never she figured.

Lucy shifted in her lap then and she glanced down at the little girl in her arms as the subway car rattled through the underground tunnels to its next scheduled destination. Yes, she decided as she pressed another kiss into her daughter's hair and gathered her close. As was the case with most things in life, it was surely better later than never…

_**To be**__** continued…**_

_**A/N2: **__I know – I'm being annoyingly evasive about Bert and his connection to Danny. The small, but significant part he has to play in this story will come to light in later chapters, but I thought it was about time for an introduction. It was also an opportune moment for him to help Lindsay come to terms with a few things._

_Anyway, __I hope you enjoyed the latest instalment of this mammoth epic I seem to be writing. I never really intended for it to be this long, but it keeps getting away from me. There have been quite a few unexpected detours along the way, but I think we'll eventually reach the ending that I've had planned out all along at some point!_

_Anyway, till next time then… CharmedBec x_


	36. Crime Scene Investigation

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes****: **Hey! New chapter for you. I know it's been a long time since it was mentioned, but the case that Lindsay is working on in this chapter is the crime scene that she and Danny processed way back in Chapter 3. I've always intended to return to it at some point, but it's taken a lot longer than expected to get round to it! Still, better late than never, huh?

**OOOOOO**

_**Part**__** 36 – Crime Scene Investigation**_

_**New York Crime Lab, two days later**__**…**_

Despite the on-going manhunt for the 'See No Evil' killer, Lindsay found herself with very little to do when she arrived for her shift on Friday morning. After typing up a couple of forensic reports from the previous day, she did what she normally did on these rare occasions and decided to re-visit some of her unsolved cases to see whether a fresh eye would enable her to spot a new lead amongst the collated evidence.

The crime scene that held the greatest pull for her at present was the Trebechi case – the young woman brutally stabbed to death in her apartment by person or persons still unknown. The cherished photo of their Vic with the little dark-haired, blue-eyed girl in pigtails was the key to the case, Lindsay was certain of it. All the evidence was pointing towards it being a professional hit though. The general theory right now was that Helen Trebechi had gotten herself mixed up in some kind of drug ring and had paid the ultimate price for not toeing the line.

Lindsay however, believed differently. Officially, Helen Trebechi was an orphan. Her parents had died in a car accident when she was seventeen. She had no siblings and there was no record of her ever having given birth. It made no sense whatsoever because the small child in the picture was clearly a relative. There wasn't a shred of evidence to support this theory of course, but Lindsay just couldn't shake off what her instincts were telling her. There was a family connection here, she was absolutely certain of it.

Carefully removing the photo from the evidence bag, she laid it out on the light table in front of her, and then flipped through the boxes of evidence until she came across a second photo. The detail on the evidence tag said it was from the employee record of the company that Helen had worked for – the photo taken for her id card about six months before her untimely death. Lindsay placed the second picture on the light table next to the first and studied them both through thoughtful eyes.

She needed a time reference, she realised. She needed to know when the child in the picture was born. By comparing the two photos, could she work out how old their Vic had been in the first picture? Would the Crime Lab's facial aging software be that sensitive? If it worked, it would give her an approximate time window for the little girl's birth. The child was no more than four in Lindsay's estimation and she didn't have a young toddler's typical baby-faced chubbiness either. All this put her at around three years of age when the picture was taken.

Picking up the two photos, Lindsay took them across to the scanner, placed them face down on the glass, and then sat down in front of the computer terminal to run the comparison software. It wasn't the most accurate of analyses that she'd ever conducted, but it did indicate that their Vic had been approximately three to six years younger in the first photograph in comparison to the second. Add another three years onto that and she could estimate that the little girl had been born around six to nine years ago, which would make Helen somewhere between the ages of fifteen and eighteen at the time.

It didn't paint a pretty picture at first glance, but the child had obviously been well loved by their Vic. The photo had held pride of place on the dresser and its frame had been polished to shining. Because of this, some inner instinct told Lindsay that the little girl had been born out of a consensual relationship rather than as a result of rape or sexual abuse. While Lindsay knew that many teenagers were sexually active at that age, she was still inclined to believe that Helen had been nearer eighteen than fifteen when her baby had been born…

Lindsay shook her head at that thought. She was breaking the cardinal rule of forensics - always follow the evidence and don't let unsubstantiated theories drive the investigation. There was nothing here that indicated that the child in the picture was Helen's - nothing at all except for Lindsay's own innate instincts as a mother. It was more than likely another false lead, but she couldn't let it go for some reason.

Turning back to the computer, she rolled her shoulders and then let her fingers do the searching for her…

**OOOOOO**

_**Three**__** hours later, somewhere in the Bronx…**_

"I think I'm actually shaking," Danny said in disgust as he set the paper cup aside and held out his hands in front of him.

"Caffeine buzz," Flack told him knowledgably as he munched on a cream-filled donut, scattering powdered sugar all over his navy-blue shirt as he did so.

"You know this is exactly why I gave up working as a beat cop and trained to be a CSI," Danny continued in the same complaining tone of voice. "So how come I've been stuck in this car for eight hours straight with nothing but your ugly face for company, huh?"

"Watch who you're calling ugly, butt-face," Flack protested mildly.

"Butt-face?" Danny remarked acidly. "Seriously? Is that the best you can do? I mean that's the kind of insult that Lucy comes out with."

"Lindsay allows your daughter to use terms like 'butt-face'?" Flack said in a deeply sceptical tone of voice. "I think not, brother. That would warrant a time-out for sure. _And_ put you in the proverbial dog-house if she ever found out that you had encouraged it."

Danny laughed. "More than likely, yeah," he agreed.

"So how are things going between you two lately anyway?" Don enquired conversationally.

"Hey! It passes the time," he went on defensively when Danny shot him a look. "Stake-outs are the perfect opportunity for long deep and meaningfuls, you know."

"And here's me thinking it was all trash talk and junk food," Danny replied sardonically.

"Well yeah, that too," Flack acknowledged with a grin before his expression turned more serious again. "I mean it though. You two doing okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, things are better," his friend replied. "A lot better in fact. I never thought I'd say it, but going for counselling was probably the best decision we ever made. It's brought a lot of issues out into the open that I doubt we would have talked about otherwise."

"And Lindsay's better?" Don interjected. "In herself, I mean?"

Danny nodded. "She's getting there," he said. "She seems more centred now, and her behaviour isn't quite as erratic as before." He looked down at his hands folded together in his lap. "She has a lot of deep-rooted insecurities to combat, but I think… well, she's the bravest person I know and I truly believe that she has the strength to get through this."

"Well - I think I'm gonna cry," Flack observed, the acerbic comment serving to break the thick silence that had descended after Danny's rather too emotionally frank revelation.

That earned him a retaliatory punch in the arm and he held up his hands in mock surrender. "I'm kidding!" he said with a chuckle. "I'm glad to hear things are better, honestly I am."

"So…" he went on, drawing out the syllable for deliberate effect. "If things are on the up, does that mean your epic dry spell is over at long last?"

"_That_ is none of your business," Danny told him in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Ah now, come on," Flack protested. "Trash talk is the lynch-pin of every stake-out. You're not going to deny me the entertainment now, are you buddy?"

"Yep so suck it up," Danny said as he picked up a pair of binoculars and focused them on the building across the street. "You want those kinds of kicks – try the top shelf at any self-respecting news-stand."

"Hmm. Well, I guess I'm just gonna have to tell you about the time that me and Ellen…"

"Flack!" Danny interrupted sharply before he could go any further.

"What?" Don said, suddenly all business.

"The ass-hole's finally on the move," Danny told him, tossing the binoculars aside and reaching for the radio. "Get driving, Detective."

**OOOOOO**

_**Meanwhile, b**__**ack at the Lab…**_

"Boom!" Lindsay murmured triumphantly as she stared at the information on the screen in front of her. It had to mean something, it just had to…

Her heart thumping with the excitement of her unexpected discovery, she hit 'print' and rose purposefully to her feet, her mind working fifteen to the dozen as she considered her next move. It was then that she realised her dilemma… she was still on modified assignment. Mac had not yet cleared her to go out into the field.

She pulled out her cell, flipped it open and hit speed-dial 1. It went straight to voicemail. "Damn!" she exclaimed in irritation.

She headed out into the corridor and her frustration only grew. There was nobody here with any kind of authority whatsoever. Mac, Stella, along with Danny and Hawkes were all out of the Lab following up leads on the 'See No Evil' case. But she had something, she knew she did...

Closing her eyes, she resisted the urge to scream and tried to think clearly. "Okay, okay, just keep calm, keep calm," she muttered to herself as she searched for another name in her cell and hit the call button.

Mac picked up after the third ring. "Lindsay?"

"I need to check something out on the Trebechi case," Lindsay told him without any preamble.

"Which is?"

She quickly filled him in. "It's the key, Mac. I know it is!" she said when the only response she got was a long, considered silence.

"I'm sorry, but I can't authorise this, Lindsay," Mac said before she could continue any further.

"But…"

"I can't authorise you to go out into the field alone," her boss cut in firmly. "Not yet. Find someone to go with you or stay put."

"I tried calling Danny, but he didn't pick up, and there's nobody else here!" Lindsay lamented before she could bite her tongue.

"And you need to calm down before I re-think my decision to allow you out into the field at all," Mac returned in a sharply authoritative tone.

Suitably chastised, Lindsay sucked in a calming breath. "I know, I know, I'm sorry. It's just really frustrating, you know? I know I'm onto something here, Mac. I just know it."

"I understand that, but my decision is final, Lindsay. You can go but you take someone with you for back-up, okay? Rachel Havers was the detective working the case, right?"

"Well yes but…"

"I know it's difficult," Mac interrupted, "But you're going to have to learn to work with her sometime. She and Danny seem to manage it despite their personal issues. Maybe this is your opportunity to learn how to do the same."

Lindsay would have rather eaten slugs, but she was wise enough to know that it probably wouldn't be the greatest career move in the world if she chose to voice that opinion. While Mac was unquestionably her friend, he was first and foremost her boss. He cared, she knew he did, but he wouldn't allow the efficiency of his department to be compromised. She respected that, even if he was asking her to consider a course of action that she'd much rather avoid.

"All right, I guess I'll drop by the precinct and see what I can arrange," she said reluctantly.

"You do that, and keep me posted, okay?"

"Sure," she agreed and then ended the call. Well, that was just fabulous, wasn't it? An afternoon with her husband's ex-lover - she was so looking forward to that… not!

**OOOOOO**

_**Forty-five**__** minutes later…**_

"Booty calls are strictly prohibited, you know that right?" Rachel Havers said to Don Flack's girlfriend, Ellen Robertson as they walked down the sidewalk towards the precinct's entrance.

Ellen laughed. "Relax," she soothed. "I'm just gonna drop by and get him in the mood for tonight."

"I think he's out with Danny on a stake-out," Rachel warned. "So he's probably not going to be around."

"So," Ellen shrugged as if this was of no matter. "I'll leave him a note." She grinned. "A sealed one."

Rachel laughed. "You're shameless!"

"And proud," her friend shot back. "And can you blame me? The guy is hot with a capital 'H' and he's all mine." Her eyes narrowed then as she spied a tell-tale figure approaching from the opposite direction. "Well, whaddya know? If it isn't Miss Vacillation."

"Ellen," Rachel warned. "Zip it, okay? I'm on the clock and like it or not, she's a colleague."

"Oo and doesn't she just look super happy to see us?" Ellen commented dryly as Lindsay lifted her head and spotted them heading towards her.

There was an awkward pause as the three women's paths met at the bottom of the short flight of steps heading up into the precinct. "Umm – you err… got a minute?" Lindsay enquired of Rachel when she managed to locate her voice.

"For what?"

"I think I have a lead on the Trebechi case. It's a bit of a curveball, but I'm hoping it's the break we've been waiting for," Lindsay explained, purposely ignoring the death-stare Flack's girlfriend was aiming in her direction.

Rachel nodded noncommittally. "And you're coming to me with this because…?"

Lindsay looked decidedly uncomfortable. "I err… I need someone to go with me to check it out," she said. "Mac's cleared me for field work, but only if I've got someone with me for back-up."

Rachel raised her eyebrows. "I'm guessing I'm not your first choice of companion?" she said, her tone heavy with irony.

"More like a last resort," Lindsay admitted bluntly, "But this is important so…" She left the statement hanging but the underlying implication was clear.

"You've got some nerve," Ellen cut in then.

Lindsay's temper sparked. "And this is your business how?" she shot back.

"Do I have to spell it out?"

Lindsay sighed. "Look – I'm sorry Rachel got caught up in the middle of things, I really am, but I won't apologise for still loving my husband, or for trying to build a proper family life for my daughter again. She deserves that even if I don't deserve Danny's forgiveness for making such a mess of our lives."

She turned her attention back to Rachel then. "I'm here to work this case, okay? Believe me this is not my idea of a fun afternoon either, but you saw that apartment, you saw what the perp did to her. I'm just trying to get her a little justice. If working with me is too much for you to handle then I'll go, no questions asked…"

Rachel shook her head. "No, no, I'm okay - I don't like it, sure - but I can handle it."

Lindsay nodded. "Good, so we're on the same page then," she said. "As for you," she turned back to Ellen, her eyes glittering with irritation. "Don is one of Danny's closest friends and whether you like it or not, that isn't going to change any time soon. I know we're never going to be BFF's, but I think for their sakes we should at least try to be civil, don't you? Maybe Danny has to accept some responsibility for the situation, but it sure as hell isn't fair on Flack to be stuck in the middle of it."

She nodded curtly at Rachel. "I'll see you inside," she finished, and then turned on her heel and marched up the steps into the precinct.

Rachel glanced at her friend's outraged face. "She has a point," she said. "I appreciate the support, but you can't expect Flack's loyalties to be the same as yours. He and Danny have been friends for years, not to mention the fact that Lindsay's his friend too. Neither she nor Danny expected him to take sides when they split – I should know, I was there. It's a bit much for you to demand it of him now. The guy's not stupid, you know, he knows better than to suggest you take part in some kind of cosy double-date with the two of them, but I think you're going to piss him off pretty damn quick if you can't at least manage to be polite when y'all cross paths. Is that what you really want?"

"Of course not," Ellen said, her expression pinched. "Her 'butter wouldn't melt' act just makes me so mad and it annoys me that he can't see through it. I mean did you hear her just now? 'I won't apologise for still loving my husband' She damn well should when her husband belonged to someone else!"

Rachel shook her head with a wry smile. "Isn't that a contradiction in terms?" she asked. "_Her_ husband, Ellen, not mine. Like or not, in the eyes of the law, her claim is the more legitimate one, especially considering there's a child involved."

"I still can't understand why you're so accepting of the situation."

"Because Danny has made up his mind," Rachel replied, "And I'd only be humiliating myself further if I tried to change it. I always knew his feelings for Lindsay weren't exactly dead and buried, but I figured that with time..."

She broke off with a sad shake of her head. "And I suppose I can't help thinking of Lucy too," she went on after a beat. "She's such a little sweetheart; you can't help falling in love with her. She was always Mommy this and Mommy that, it just didn't occur to her that Daddy - and especially Daddy's girlfriend - wouldn't want to know."

She sighed. "Danny and I had a lot of fun together, yes, but we were hardly Romeo and Juliet. I did feel that we had a lot of potential, but I have more self-respect than to hanker after someone who is clearly in love with someone else. I'm just grateful that I got out before I got in too deep if you want to know the truth. As for Lindsay… well, she's never going to be my favourite person in the world, but I can't really blame her for being unable to let Danny go when it finally came to signing on that dotted line. As much as it pains me to admit it, I think I'd have probably done the same thing in her shoes."

Ellen crossed her arms under her breasts. "You're determined to be mature and sensible about this, aren't you?"

Rachel shrugged. "So sue me." She brushed her titian ponytail back over her shoulder. "It helps that it's getting easier," she admitted. "I've never been one to wallow in a painful break-up for an extended period of time. It just isn't me. It's always been my policy to get back out there as soon as possible. This time's no different so the continued outrage on my behalf isn't really necessary."

"Well, you're a better woman than me," Ellen remarked.

Rachel smiled. "No – just a more pragmatic one. You have passion, Ellen, unpredictability – I imagine that's what Flack finds so attractive about you, but if you continue to direct your inner bitch at Lindsay the way that you are, then it's going to wear pretty thin, pretty fast. Rein it in, hon, or you might just find yourself without a boyfriend."

Ellen threw up her hands in defeat. "All right, I'll bite my tongue, exchange polite niceties with the woman - even if I do think Danny's got rocks in his head choosing her over you."

"There, that wasn't so hard, was it?" Rachel said encouragingly.

Her friend said something unprintable in return, and Rachel laughed.

Ellen smiled. "I'm a nice person really," she said defensively. "And I think I'm falling in love with Don so…" She shrugged and then reached out to hug her friend goodbye. "I'll see you Sunday, yeah?"

"I thought you were coming in," Rachel said.

Ellen wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Humility's not my strong suit," she confessed. "So I'll think I'll pass. Don't let her get under your skin, okay?"

"I'll be the perfect professional even if it kills me," Rachel assured her as she turned for the precinct doors.

**OOOOOO**

They'd had him cornered, but he'd come out fighting… with a sawn-off shotgun.

"Damn it!" Flack exclaimed vehemently as he watched the ever-widening pool of blood stain the dirty cobblestones. "He knew something, he had to!"

"Flack…"

"I only meant to maim him, but he moved at the last minute and…" He shook his head in disgust. "Now we're back to square one!"

"FLACK!"

Don whipped around just in time to see his colleague sit down heavily on a nearby packing crate. His face was pale and there was blood staining his grey t-shirt. "Jesus!" He hurried forward. "Where?"

"My arm," Danny said through gritted teeth. "&%$!" he swore as his friend eased the thick leather jacket off his shoulder to take a look.

"Just a flesh wound," Don observed with relief. "Looks pretty nasty though so you should probably get it checked out." He wrapped his scarf around the bleeding injury as a make-shift bandage, and then pulled it tight, prompting Danny to swear at him a second time.

"Don't be such a baby, it's a scratch," Flack admonished as he drew out his cell and called the incident in. "Mac's gonna be pissed," he said after he'd ended the brief call.

"What? That I got hurt or that you killed our only solid lead?" Danny remarked.

"Make me feel better why don't you?"

"Flack – it was a good shoot," Danny said, gesturing with his good arm at the bullet-strewn alleyway and the two dented dumpsters that had shielded them from the worst of it. "You didn't have any other option. It was either take him out or go to an early grave."

Flack nodded curtly. "I should probably call Lindsay, right?"

Danny shook his head. "No, don't freak her out."

Flack frowned. "This'll be all over the NYPD grapevine within hours, Dan."

"I know, but I'll call her as soon as I've got this patched up." He shifted, trying to get more comfortable and then winced as the movement jarred his injured arm.

"What happened anyway?" Flack asked.

"Zigged when I should have zagged," Danny replied, his voice strained.

Don looked at his friend in concern. Sweat had broken out on his brow. "You feelin' all right?"

Pressing his lips together, Danny closed his eyes. "A little light-headed, but I'll be fine," he answered.

"Well, here come the cavalry," Flack said, as the scream of approaching sirens reached their ears. He stood, squaring his shoulders resolutely. "Stay where you are. I'll go greet them."

As another stab of debilitating pain rippled through his upper arm, Danny was only to glad to oblige…

**OOOOOO**

Lindsay lifted her hand and knocked sharply on the apartment door, then stood back as she heard sounds of movement from within. A young woman in her late twenties opened the door a few moments later and looked at them enquiringly. "Yes?" she said.

"Karenna Melvin?" Rachel asked.

"Yes umm… that's me. What…?"

"NYPD," Rachel said formally as both she and Lindsay proffered their badges.

Karenna's face paled. "Oh god! It's Helen isn't it? I knew it when she didn't… I knew it, but I hoped… oh god!" Her hands rose to cover her mouth.

"Miss Melvin - may we come in?" Lindsay asked gently.

"Yes umm…" The young woman's eyes filled as she stepped back to let them across the threshold. "Is she…?"

Lindsay nodded in confirmation as Rachel closed the door behind them. "I'm sorry," she said with genuine sympathy.

Karenna let out a single grief-stricken sob, but then, with a great effort of will, she managed to pull herself together. "They found her, didn't they?" she asked shakily.

"Who found her Miss Melvin?" Rachel enquired at once.

"I… err…" Karenna started and then faltered, her gaze narrowing with a dawning suspicion. "You don't know, do you?"

"Know what?" Rachel asked.

Karenna looked between the two detectives, her eyes wide and moist with unshed tears. "She… oh god!"

Lindsay reached out and took the young woman's arm, then led her over to a nearby chair and urged her to sit down. "How about we rewind a little?" she said soothingly as she and Rachel sat down on the sofa opposite. "The beginning is a good place to start, I always find."

Her hands twisting together in her lap, Karenna nodded her agreement.

"So how did you and Helen meet?" Lindsay enquired.

"We were best friends at school," Karenna told them. "We come from a little place in upstate New York, but when I was thirteen my Dad got a job in the City and me and my family moved out here."

"And you and Helen kept in touch afterwards?" Rachel asked.

"For the first couple of years, yeah," Karenna replied, "But you know how it goes when you're young. We didn't completely lose touch, but we each had our own lives and our own friends so…" She broke off with a resigned shrug.

"Records show that you and Helen were leasing the same apartment in Queens around nine years ago," Lindsay stated.

"Yeah umm…" Karenna dropped her gaze to her lap before continuing. "I'd had a serious falling out with my Mom and Dad the year before and I moved out. I was lucky really - I could've ended up on the streets, but my Gran had left me a small trust fund when she died – not enough to live on but it at least helped me to rent a reasonably decent apartment."

"You were an emancipated minor?" Rachel asked.

Karenna nodded. "My Dad umm… he err… he hit me, broke my nose. He'd hit me before, but never like that, and my Mom… well, she thought I deserved it. They were pretty conservative, you see, but this is New York City and I was young…" She sighed. "Anyway, because of my age, child services didn't really want to put me into the system for only a few months so I got emancipated instead."

"So how did Helen come to be living with you?" Lindsay asked.

"She just showed up on my doorstep one day. She was a total mess – her parents had just died and… well, there was a lot of other stuff she was running from too."

Lindsay nodded, but chose not to comment at that point. "Records also show that you gave birth to a seven pound baby girl on May 3rd 2004," she said instead.

Karenna's expression grew wary at that and Lindsay felt her heart leap inside her chest. Her instincts had been right, now all she needed was the confirmation. "Miss Melvin?" she pressed when Karenna failed to respond.

"I umm…" Karenna ran an agitated hand through her hair and then finally relented. "That… that wasn't me," she confessed in a rush. "That was Helen. She used my name, my insurance… We knew it was wrong, but we were only eighteen at the time and we just didn't know what else to do. Helen was scared that they'd find her, and we knew they'd be watching the hospitals so it seemed like the only option."

"They?" Rachel prompted.

Karenna's expression became shuttered at that. "Look, I don't… I… I have two children to protect. Helen wouldn't want… she'd want me to stick to our agreement."

Lindsay nodded. "Okay, no names for now," she said smoothly before their witness clammed up any further, "Just tell us the story all right?"

Karenna hesitated for a moment, but then reluctantly nodded. "When Helen showed up at my door, she was six months pregnant," she said. "Her boyfriend Gray… he err… he was in the accident that killed her parents. The car slid on some ice and went straight into the path of an oncoming dumper truck – the three of them were killed instantly."

"Gray's parents… well, they'd thrown him out when he told them about Helen's pregnancy but afterwards… They took her in, organised all three funerals. She was numb with shock so she never suspected that they had an ulterior motive – I mean who would? But then a couple of weeks later, they told her that they wanted the baby. Gray was their only child, you see. They said they'd pay her a hundred thousand dollars if she left the child with them, then walked away and never looked back."

"She told them no, of course. She hadn't planned to get pregnant, but she'd made up her mind to keep the baby and now the child was all the family that she had left. They got nasty then – threatened her, said they'd take the baby anyway, get her declared an unfit mother…"

"So she ran," Lindsay surmised.

Karenna nodded. "Yes, but it took her weeks to get away from them. They kept her a virtual prisoner in the house. She got lucky though, gave them the slip on a trip to the doctor's office and managed to hitch a ride outta town before anyone realised that she'd gone."

"Why didn't she just go to the authorities?" Rachel asked.

Karenna made a derisive sound in the back of her throat. "Yeah, like that would have helped," she said sarcastically. "Gray's parents had considerable influence - the town sheriff was totally in their pocket by all accounts."

"But what about when she arrived in New York?" Lindsay interjected. "Why didn't she report it then?"

Karenna shrugged. "Gray's parents have money. She didn't think she could fight them in court and win."

"So she chose to hide instead?" Lindsay finished for her.

Karenna nodded. "It was okay for a couple of years – the three of us – me, Helen and little Grace – we lived together quite happily. It was sometimes a struggle to get by, but we shared the childcare between the two of us, which meant we had two incomes coming in. And then when Grace was three, Helen saw Gray's father in Manhattan – I guess he was there on business or something. She was convinced that he'd recognised her and she was terrified. She was sure that they would track her down and take Gracie…"

Karenna sighed. "So she decided to leave – find an apartment in a completely different part of the city so they couldn't connect the two of us."

"And she left her daughter behind with you?" Lindsay asked a little incredulously. She simply couldn't imagine giving up Lucy like that. It'd be like losing her right arm, not to mention a massive chunk of her heart.

Karenna nodded. "I think it was the hardest decision she ever made. I was Gracie's mother on the paperwork though so…" She shrugged. "Over the next few years, she constantly moved – only ever signing up to six month leases so that she could get away quickly if she needed to. We'd meet every couple of weeks out of the city so that she could spend some time with Gracie. It wasn't the same obviously, and I thought she was taking it all a bit too far, but Helen was paranoid. I can't be positive, but I think there were probably things that she'd never told me about what happened with Gray's parents. She trusted me a hundred percent, but I believe she wanted to protect me too. After a while, I stopped arguing with her because Gracie…"

Karenna stopped and closed her eyes. "Gracie has always known that Helen is her Mom," she said when she opened them again, "But I was the one caring for her twenty-four/seven. It changed the dynamics of my relationship with her – she became my daughter as much as Helen's."

"So Grace is still with you?" Lindsay asked.

Karenna nodded. "Yes, she's at school right now. Mark took Ben to go pick her up."

"My boyfriend and our six month old son," Karenna explained off Lindsay's enquiring look. Her face clouded over a little. "Me and Helen haven't always been on the best of terms over the past few years," she confessed, "Mostly because of Mark, I think."

"She didn't approve of the relationship?"

"No, not really," Karenna said. "I'd kept Helen's secret for years, but when my relationship with Mark started to get serious, it was important for me to tell him the truth. It felt wrong to lie to him and I couldn't expect Gracie not mention her mother in front of him, especially as we were planning to live together as a family."

She sighed. "Mark thought we should go to the authorities, but he respected that it was ultimately Helen's decision. He said he could understand the way we'd reacted when we were just a couple of scared kids, but that we were adults now and should realise that the courts don't take children away from their mothers without good reason. Helen didn't like that, and she didn't like the fact that I kept seeing him afterwards, or that I got pregnant by him either. Me? I was stuck in the middle – I love them both and can see both their points of view. But this is my life not Helen's – Mark was the one for me and I couldn't let him go."

"So you think Mark informed Gray's parents of Helen's whereabouts?" Rachel asked her.

"What? No!" Karenna looked shocked. "He would _never_ do that. He understands how much I love Gracie and he loves her too. Helen didn't trust him, but that's only because she was so scared of what might happen. He's a good man and, anyway, he doesn't know who Gray's parents are. I wouldn't back down on telling him the truth, but I did promise Helen that I'd keep their true names out of it."

She looked at them with wide, scared eyes. "Do you really think they killed her?" she asked in a small voice.

"That's something we'll need to look into further," Lindsay said matter-of-factly. "Did Helen have any other enemies that you know of?"

Karenna shook her head. "She kept herself to herself most of the time. She's had a few boyfriends, but nothing really serious, and apart from me, her friends have always been more casual acquaintances than close confidantes. She isolated herself so much more than she needed to. It was all for Gracie, but it was to the detriment of Helen's own life, I think. She was very lonely and I didn't know how to make it better for her. I suggested that maybe she could have Gracie to stay over so that they'd get to spend more quality time together, but she wouldn't risk it. It was like she believed that her isolation from us was the only thing that kept her baby safe."

Karenna paused to wipe away the tears streaming down her cheeks. "How am I supposed to tell Gracie?" she whispered. "And what if they're innocent? They'd be able to take her back, wouldn't they? I mean I'm not a blood relative and we falsified her birth certificate…" Her voice broke in sudden anguish.

Personally, Lindsay didn't think the family court would remove a child from a woman who had essentially been a second mother to her for the past nine years unless there was some strong evidence that it wouldn't be in the child's best interest to remain where she was. She couldn't guarantee that of course so she said nothing. It wasn't right to offer false hope.

It was crazy but she found herself hoping that Gray's parents had been involved in Helen's murder. She remembered the turmoil she felt when she'd discovered she was pregnant with Lucy. Because she and Danny hadn't been in best of places at the time, she'd had to seriously consider how she'd cope if she had to go it alone. It would have been hard, but she'd have done it because there was no way she could have aborted or given up her baby.

She admired both Helen and Karenna for the strength that they'd shown, even if their chosen course of action hadn't necessarily been the right one. Karenna had taken on her best friend's child, loved her as her own, while Helen had made the ultimate sacrifice to keep her child safe. It was a tragic story, but a strangely uplifting one too. But if poor Karenna were to lose young Grace now…

There was the scrape of a key in the lock then and Karenna rose to her feet and hurried forward as the door opened. A tall, broad-shouldered man of around thirty entered, pushing a baby stroller in front of him. A young girl followed closely on his heels, a heavy school bag slung over one shoulder and her dark hair secured in a long braid down her back. Lindsay recognised her resemblance to the toddler in the picture immediately.

"Karenna?" the man asked in concern when he noticed the tracks of tears on his girlfriend's cheeks.

"Gracie," Karenna said, turning to the young girl. "How about you make a start on your homework, honey? I'll bring you through some milk and cookies in a bit."

"But…" Grace objected, clearly realising that she was being sent out of earshot for a reason.

"I'll come and talk to you in a little while, I promise," Karenna said softly, reaching out to cup the child's pretty pixie face in her hand. She leaned forward and kissed the young girl's forehead. "I love you, baby – now scoot, okay?"

With some reluctance, Grace obeyed and Karenna turned back to her boyfriend. "Helen," she said simply, and then her face crumpled and she began to sob in earnest.

The shock on Mark's face was clearly apparent as he put his arms around his crying girlfriend and drew her close. He looked over her head at Lindsay and Rachel. "Umm who…?"

"Detectives Messer and Havers," Lindsay introduced the two of them.

The man's eyes widened. "I thought…" He shook his head. "I thought they were making a mountain out of a molehill..." he admitted guiltily. "Helen was always a little highly strung." He squared his jaw. "Are my family in danger?" he demanded. "Will they come after Karenna? Gracie…?"

"That's hard to say at this point," Lindsay told him. "Helen was murdered a couple of months ago…"

Mark blanched. "Jesus! That long?"

"Didn't you think it was unusual that she didn't get in touch?" Rachel asked.

"A little, yes, but… there was kind of a row the last time we saw her so…" He shrugged. "She was mad at Karenna and I, but I didn't think she'd stay away from Gracie for very long. We were starting to get worried, but Karenna was adamant we couldn't go to the cops."

"A row?" Rachel asked.

Mark nodded. "We err… went by her apartment one evening. We were going to invite her on a night out with friends. She went a little crazy because we'd come to her place and also because we'd left Gracie with a babysitter."

"I was worried about her," Karenna said, lifting her face from her boyfriend's chest. "She was getting so insular. It had been nine years; I thought it was time for her to relax a little. Gracie was asking questions too – she'd always accepted the way things were because she didn't really know any different, but I think she was starting to realise our domestic situation wasn't exactly normal. She's been angry, disruptive recently… Ben's arrival has stirred things up for her and I think she feels a little rejected. I thought it was time she knew the truth, but Helen wanted to keep her wrapped up in cotton wool. She just didn't understand that it was doing Gracie more harm than good not properly explaining things to her."

"So you argued?" Lindsay said.

Karenna nodded. "Yes, and I guess it got pretty heated. I told her she needed to step up as a mother rather than running away all the time, and she accused me of trying to drive a wedge between her and Gracie in return."

"I think she thought we wanted rid of Grace too," Mark interjected. "She figured that now we had Ben and each other that there was no room for Gracie anymore."

"But that was never true," Karenna said vehemently. "I wanted Gracie to have more time with her Mom, because that's what she needed, but I never wanted to give her up. I'm her Mom too, the thought of not having her in my life…" She shuddered.

"If you want to keep your family together, we need names, Karenna," Lindsay said, sensing an opening where previously the door had been shut.

"But what if they find us?" Karenna said in a frightened tone.

"There is no reason for them to know where our information comes from. If it leads to a trial, you may be called as a witness, but right now we can keep you anonymous."

"And what about Karenna?" Mark asked. "Do I need to get her a lawyer? I mean she and Helen essentially committed identity fraud, didn't they?"

"I can't really say what will happen," Lindsay said, "That's not within our jurisdiction. There are extenuating circumstances here though…" She glanced down at the baby in the stroller who had just begun to stir. "Consult a lawyer by all means however – it's best to be prepared for all eventualities."

"Karenna…" Mark looked at his girlfriend appealingly. "You've got to tell them. For Helen's sake, for Gracie's… and for Ben's," he finished as the baby let out a loud wail to indicate he was awake and in need of attention.

Karenna shook her head. "I don't know… I can't… I promised Helen." She moved to pick up her child. "He needs changing," she said absently.

"I'll do it," Lindsay offered, sensing that if anyone was going to persuade Karenna to divulge Grace's grandparents' names it was her boyfriend. "The two of you should take some time to discuss this."

"I have a four year old," she said off Karenna's slightly wary look. She pulled out the picture of Lucy that she kept in her purse and showed it to the other woman by way of evidence. "I've changed plenty of diapers in my time, believe me."

"She's beautiful," Karenna commented.

Lindsay smiled. "Yeah, and a handful just like her Daddy, but I wouldn't be without her."

Karenna hesitated a moment longer and then handed over her baby. Mark took her by the arm. "Is it all right if we discuss this in private?" he asked Lindsay, who nodded her assent as she jigged the whimpering baby up-and-down in her arms.

"Was that wise?" Rachel asked when the young couple went through into their bedroom. "They could have killed her too, you know. You heard what they said – there was a row. Maybe Helen threatened to take Grace back and Karenna lost it."

Lindsay frowned. "After all the steps they've taken to keep that child safe?" She shook her head. "They're family and family sticks together."

"You can't ignore the possibility," Rachel said. "For all you know, things may have gotten out of hand. It does happen, you know."

Lindsay didn't abide by the theory, but she reluctantly admitted that Rachel was right. It was an avenue that needed to be looked into. "Can you pass me the diaper bag?" she said.

"Diaper bag?" Rachel looked confused.

Lindsay waved her hand at the stroller. "The blue and white checked bag," she instructed.

Taking the bag from Rachel, she knelt on the floor and withdrew the changing mat then placed the wriggling six-month old down on it and began to pull off the little sweatpants he wore. "Well, aren't you just a gorgeous little cupcake, huh?" she crooned as she flipped open the tabs on his dirty diaper.

"I don't know how you can do that," Rachel remarked, wrinkling her nose as Lindsay wiped the tiny boy's bottom clean with a couple of scrunched up baby wipes.

Lindsay laughed. "You kind of get immune after a while," she said.

She smiled down into the baby's face, who was gazing up at her mesmerised as she expertly fastened the clean diaper on him. "I've always wondered what it would like to have a boy," she mused absently, forgetting to whom she was speaking. "Danny was convinced he would be getting a son, but I don't know, I think I always knew we'd have a girl. Still, maybe next time, huh?"

"You and Danny have discussed having another baby?" Rachel's voice was tight and Lindsay froze.

"I… I'm sorry, that was insensitive."

"He wants another child?" Rachel went on sceptically. "He told you that, did he? He always told me that he would have to seriously consider it before he'd go down that road again."

Lindsay felt a chill at that. Had Danny just been telling her what he thought she wanted to hear then? Did he really not want another baby? But he loved being a Daddy, didn't he? Lucy was the apple of his eye. Why wouldn't he want to experience that a second time around?

Before Lindsay could press her for further details though, Rachel's cell rang and she turned away to answer it. "Detective Havers?"

There was a short pause followed by a sharp intake of breath. "What? When?" Another pause. "How bad?" A beat. "Which hospital?"

"Okay, okay, I'll be there as soon as I can." She shut off the call and turned back to Lindsay, deep lines of worry etched into her face.

"What?" Lindsay said, a feeling of dread settling like a block of ice in the pit of her stomach. "What's wrong?"

Rachel drew in a deep breath before answering. "Danny's been shot…"

_**To be**__** continued…**_


	37. Second Chances

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary:**The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi! Sorry for the long wait for an update. Work has been pretty hectic over the past few weeks so I've had very little time to write :-(

Anyway, here it finally is – hope you enjoy! P.S. More Author's Notes at the end…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 37 – Second Chances**_

"Why isn't anyone answering their phone?" Lindsay exclaimed as Danny's cell went straight to voicemail for the fifth time since she'd begun calling him fifteen minutes ago. She'd tried Flack and Mac repeatedly too, but had had no luck there either. It was as if they were all deliberately avoiding her and she couldn't help the horrible sense of foreboding that overcame her as a result.

"Why did they call you anyway?" she snapped at Rachel, who was sitting in the driver's seat beside her, her knuckles white on the steering wheel as she negotiated the late afternoon traffic and tried to contain her own worry for Danny. "_I'm_ his wife."

"_They _didn't call me," Rachel shot back in an equally frigid tone. "My friend Sarah in Despatch did. Her colleagues told her about it when she arrived for her shift – it's big news in there when an 'officer down' call comes in. She figured I might want to know."

"Well, it's a pity nobody thought _I'd_ might want to know," Lindsay remarked acidly just as her phone finally began to trill. She glanced down at the flashing display – Flack. Well, it was about goddamn time…

"How come Rachel gets to know that my husband's been shot before I do, huh?" she demanded before he could utter a single word.

Flack swore under his breath before rushing to reassure her. "Look Linds, he's fine, it was just a flesh wound. He didn't want to… wait a minute, hasn't he called you yet?"

Lindsay's bubble of righteous anger instantly deflated as she heard the sudden concern enter her colleague's voice. "No, his cell keeps going to voicemail," she said, a bone-deep fear sending a shiver of apprehension down her spine.

"But I've been with I.A for the past ninety minutes," Flack said more to himself than her. "I mean he should have called you by now, surely?"

"What makes you think that?" Lindsay asked him shakily.

"He said he was going to call you as soon as he got to the E.R," Flack told her before his voice faded out from the call for a moment. "_No,_" he said to somebody out of earshot. "_She hasn't heard anything yet._"

There was an indistinct mumble in reply and then Flack came back on the line. "Lindsay listen, Mac's gonna see what he can find out," he said soothingly. "We'll call you as soon as we know something, okay? Where are you right now?"

"We're on our way to the hospital," Lindsay told him. "We should be there in about ten minutes." She sucked in a trembling breath. "Why don't you know what's going on though? I thought you were with him when it happened?"

"I was, but I shot and killed a possible material witness in the 'See No Evil' case so I had to stick around here," Flack explained. "The press and I.A are swarming all over us so we've been caught up with that. Danny was conscious and talking when he left with the EMTs…"

"But he should have called me by now, shouldn't he?" Lindsay cut in, unable to contain the fearful tremor in her voice.

"Well yeah," Don answered after a beat, clearly reluctant to add to her worry but not knowing how to avoid doing so.

"You should have called me straightaway," she lambasted him. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"Danny said not to - he didn't want you freaking out when there was nothing to worry about," Don told her defensively.

"Oh and of course I'm perfectly calm right now!" Lindsay shot back, her voice rife with underlying sarcasm.

Flack let out a regretful sigh. "You're right, I'm sorry. I should have ignored him and called you anyway," he said. "But is that what really matters right now?" he added in a rather pointed tone.

Lindsay's eyes filled with the tears that she'd been valiantly trying to hold back. "No, no, of course not, I just… Oh God Flack!" Her free hand rose to cover her mouth as the horror she'd desperately been trying to suppress finally crashed in on her.

"Hey, hey, he'll be fine," Flack soothed, disturbed by the sound of her broken-heartened anguish. "I mean maybe it was a bit more serious than it initially looked, but I really don't think it was life-threatening."

"You're not qualified to make that diagnosis, Don," Lindsay told him, her voice hoarse with the effort of keeping her tears at bay.

"I know, but I've seen plenty of gunshot wounds in my time. This was a scratch compared to some of them, trust me."

"I'm trying! But I… I only just got him back, Flack. I can't lose him again, I just can't!"

Lindsay's voice rose in pitch as hysteria began to take hold. Her heart was thudding like a frenzied drumbeat inside her chest and it was getting more and more difficult to draw oxygen into her lungs…

Sensing the beginnings of a panic attack, she closed her eyes and tried to focus on regulating her breathing to a more normal level. She couldn't succumb to such weakness right now. Danny needed her to be strong – not to mention the utter humiliation that breaking down in front of Rachel would cause her.

"Linds – you okay?" Flack's worried voice enquired as she struggled to bring her wayward emotions back in check.

'_Deep breath in, slow breath out,_' Lindsay was chanting inwardly to herself, determined to remain in control. '_Deep breath in…_'

"Linds?"

The sharpness in Don's tone cut through her focus and she let go of her breath with a sudden whoosh. "I'm fine, I'm fine," she said, more to reassure herself than him.

She could hold it together, she could. Danny was going to be all right, she'd know it in her heart if something was seriously wrong. Lifting her gaze from her lap, she saw the looming hospital building through the windshield and her panic receded somewhat. It was the not knowing that was the worst, she decided. Once she knew what they were facing, she'd be able to cope, she was sure of it. Instinct would just take over and she'd get through it because she had to.

"Has Mac found out anything yet?" she asked, her voice calmer in spite of the roiling fear still churning in her gut.

"From the look on his face, I'd say he's hitting something of a brick wall with the hospital staff," Flack told her apologetically. "You know they never like to give out information to non-relatives even when that non-relative is NYPD."

"Well, it's not going to make much difference now anyway because we're nearly there," Lindsay said. Her gaze wandered to the digital clock on the dash then, and the red neon numbers triggered a spark of memory as they flickered from 16:55 to 16:56.

"Lucy!" she exclaimed. "I need someone to pick her up from her play-date. Our babysitter Shelley had to leave early today, but Miranda said she didn't mind watching Lucy until I got home from work. I was supposed to be there to pick her up at five though."

"No worries - just give me the address and I'll go fetch her," Flack offered. "I guess you'd better call this Miranda woman so she knows it's okay to hand over a sweet and innocent four year old to a strange - if devastatingly handsome – man though."

Lindsay smiled at Flack's quip in spite of her inner fear for her injured husband. Personally, she figured that Miranda would know that it was fine to hand over Lucy when the little girl launched herself at her 'Uncle Flack' the moment he walked through the door. However, safety was paramount when it came to her child so she gave Don the address and promised to call her friend to inform her of the change in plan.

"Oh my god, Lindsay!" Miranda said after she'd explained the situation. "Is Danny gonna be all right?"

"I don't know for sure yet," Lindsay said, bracing her hand against the dash as Rachel took the corner into the hospital car park at speed. "Don didn't seem to think it was too serious so I'm trying to stay positive."

"What do you want me to tell Lucy?" Miranda asked her.

Lindsay hadn't really thought about that. "Nothing for now, I guess," she decided. "It's probably best that she hears it from me - or from Flack at least anyway. He'll know how to explain it to her without frightening her too much. He's had experience of that kind of thing. Just tell her that Uncle Flack's coming to pick her up – she's used to me or Danny getting unexpectedly caught up at work and having to adjust the childcare arrangements so she won't think it too unusual."

"All right," Miranda agreed.

"Look, I've gotta go," Lindsay said as she climbed out of the car and headed towards the hospital entrance, Rachel close on her heels. "Flack'll be with you as soon as he can. Thanks for holding onto Lucy until he can get there – I hope it hasn't caused you too much inconvenience."

"Honey, don't worry about it. Okay so it might mean that dinner's a little late but it's hardly the end of the world. I hope Danny's all right – you'll let me know won't you?"

"Of course," Lindsay replied and then bade the other mother farewell.

Dropping her phone back into her coat pocket, she stepped through the automatic doors into the E.R and hurriedly approached the desk, reaching for her badge as she did so. She might be Danny's wife, but her shield added a little extra impetus to her demand for information. She supposed she should feel guilty about using it thus, but right now all that mattered was discovering the seriousness of her husband's condition.

The receptionist gave her a room number on the fourth floor, which soothed some of her immediate anxiety. They'd moved him out of the E.R, but he hadn't been taken to theatre or the I.C.U so that was something at least. The fact that he'd been admitted rather than discharged was definitely a cause for concern though. If it had just been a flesh wound as Flack had said, then surely they would have let him come home?

She hastened towards the bank of elevators, barely aware of Rachel hurrying along by her side. If she'd been more cognisant of what was going on around her, she'd probably have found the other woman's presence an intrusion. As it was though, all she could think about was Danny. She needed to see him. She needed to know that he was okay. They'd come this far, God wouldn't take him away from her now. He just couldn't. It was unfathomable.

Yes, they'd made one unholy mess of things before, but they deserved this second chance, they did. They'd worked hard to resolve the issues that had torn them apart and were slowly building a new life for themselves and their little daughter. It had been a long, hard slog but one that had been nothing less than successful so far. To have all that snatched away before they could reap the benefits of their endeavours was just unimaginable. It couldn't happen, it wouldn't…

"I need to see Danny Messer," she demanded in a breathless rush when an officious-looking nurse dressed in mint-green scrubs stepped forward to block their path.

"And you are?"

"His wife!" Lindsay snapped impatiently. Without waiting for a response, she nimbly dodged around the nurse and made a beeline for the room at the end of the corridor, not caring that she was probably breaking hospital protocol by not properly registering at the ward reception. It was all a crock anyway; injured people needed their loved ones with them no matter what as far as Lindsay was concerned.

"Oh God!" she breathed as she pushed open the door and stepped inside the dimly-lit hospital room. Danny lay propped up in the bed, a drip taped to the back of his right hand and his left bicep swathed in a thick bandage. The rest of his injured arm was secured across his chest in a sling. His eyes were closed, his face ghostly pale and his lips tinged with blue. It was frightening to see him like that. He was normally so strong, so brim full of health.

"Babe?" she whispered fearfully, hurrying to the side of the bed. Shrugging out of her coat, she tossed it on a nearby chair as she perched on the edge of the mattress. Her heart in her throat, she reached out to touch his grizzled face, needing to feel the warmth of his skin to reassure herself that he was alive, if not quite fully kicking at the moment.

Danny stirred at the gentle caress of her fingers against his cheek. "Hey!" he said in a cracked tone, looking up at her through bleary eyes. He blinked, obviously struggling to focus. "Sorry – morphine." A faint smile touched his lips. "Marvellous stuff."

It was that flash of humour more than anything that reassured her that he was going to be all right. She leaned down and kissed his parched lips, her hands framing his face. "You scared me," she whispered as she rested her forehead against his.

"I was supposed to call, I'm sorry. I keeled over in the back of the ambulance on the way here. I guess I'd been running on adrenaline and the supply ran out."

"What did the doctors say?" she asked worriedly, not content to accept Danny's version of events until it was backed up by the opinion of a medical professional.

"Nothing, it's fine," Danny assured her. "They had to remove some shrapnel from the bullet wound so it's a bit messier than it first appeared. The collapse was more than likely due blood-loss and delayed shock. They're only keeping me in as a precaution."

She lifted her eyebrows sceptically as she took in his weakened state. "I would think it was more like a necessity," she contradicted.

Danny's forehead creased in a frown. "I look that bad, huh?" he remarked.

"Not your usual pretty self that's for sure," she told him lightly and then promptly dissolved into tears of relief.

"Hey, hey, ssh, ssh, I'm okay," Danny murmured as she buried her face into the crook of his neck, her tears dampening his skin. Mindful of the drip in the back of his hand, he lifted his good arm to encircle her shoulders and held her close.

"I can't lose you again," she gasped through her tears.

"Babe, I'm not going anywhere," he promised her.

"You've got to stop putting yourself in danger in this way. I can't stand it."

Danny sighed. "It's part of the job, sweetheart, you _know_ that."

"I know but you're just so… so _reckless_ sometimes."

Danny shook his head in denial, recalling the incident not long after he and Lindsay were married when he'd defied Mac's orders and gone after a fleeing suspect without his vest. As he'd washed the resultant blood off his hands and wedding ring in the locker-room afterwards, he'd been brought to the timely realisation that he wasn't just beholden to himself anymore. He was never going to be Mr By-the-Book, but his days of being the ultimate maverick were over. His careless actions might have meant that he would never have held his beautiful baby girl in his arms, that he might have left the woman he loved to raise their child alone.

"No," he insisted, firmly refuting her statement. "Not anymore. I do my duty, but I don't take any unnecessary risks, I swear. I know that I have a wife and child that I need to come home to at night."

He turned his head and kissed her hair. "I love you, okay?" he declared fervently, "I'm not going to risk that, not ever again. You and Lucy – you're my reason for being, always have been, always will be."

A faint sound of movement caught his attention then, and he looked up to see Rachel standing framed in the doorway. The expression on her face told him that she'd overheard his and Lindsay's emotional exchange and his stomach lurched guiltily as a consequence. The words he'd spoken had been nothing less than the truth, but hurting her had never been his intention.

Lindsay felt Danny stiffen and she sat up, brushing away her tears as she glanced over her shoulder to see what had distracted him. Feline possessiveness surged through her when she saw Rachel hovering uncertainly in the doorway. She wanted to stake her claim and banish her rival from the room, but she bit her tongue and kept her own counsel, knowing that such behaviour would put her in a bad light.

Danny's previous relationship with this woman might be difficult for her to come to terms with, but he'd chosen to come back to her rather than remain with Rachel and she had to trust in his reasons for that. If she didn't then their marriage was built on nothing more than smoke and mirrors and she was kidding herself about its ability to withstand its current rocky patch.

It was Rachel who eventually broke the resulting silence, just as the tension in the room reached boiling point. "I'm glad you're okay," she told Danny a little awkwardly. "I was worried."

Her tone was slightly defiant as she admitted that and Lindsay bristled. It was one thing for Rachel to feel that way, but it was quite another for her to act as if she had the right to openly express it.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Danny nodded his acknowledgement. He wanted to ask her what she was doing here, but was reluctant to take that leap from the frying pan into the fire. The fact that she'd apparently rushed to the hospital to be by his side gave entirely the wrong impression to Lindsay though. It suggested that there was something more between them than there actually was. He glanced worriedly at his wife and then back at Rachel, wondering how best to respond without making the situation worse.

Sensing his dilemma, Lindsay slipped her fingers into his, her heart warmed by his obvious personal quandary. She could stay quiet and force him to prove himself, but what was the point? Even in his drugged-up state, he was showing himself to be acutely sensitive to her feelings. What more did she really need from him?

"Rachel drove me here," she told him gently. "We were following up a lead on the Trebechi case when the call came in about the shooting."

"Oh," Danny said, the relief on his face palpable.

It made Lindsay want to kiss him. Heedless of the third presence in the room, she gave into the urge and pressed her lips sweetly against his.

Rachel stood in the background, silently watching the by-play between the couple before her. If she'd hadn't already known that Danny had wholeheartedly re-committed himself to his marriage then this would have convinced her. It was what he'd wanted all along, she realised with a sharp pang. Being with her had healed some of his hurt over his marriage breakdown, but he'd never really let go of his wife. He'd brought himself back from the brink of despair, made an effort to move on because he'd needed to stay strong for his daughter, but his heart had never been fully in it.

Hadn't she always known that deep inside though? He'd told her that he hadn't been ready for commitment, had purposely erected that barrier between them to safeguard himself – and her in some respects too, she guessed. She'd convinced herself that she was fine with that and so had ended up getting in too deep before she could take a sensible step back.

A wave of ugly resentment surged through her. She'd watch Lindsay unravel on the way to the hospital, seen the way she'd clung, pathetic and sobbing, to Danny just now. What irked her most was that she knew that Danny liked strong, independent women, ones with a bit of fire and ice in their veins – so why the hell was he so enamoured of somebody so weak? It didn't make any sense to Rachel. She was certain that Lindsay's neediness must irritate him beyond belief and yet he just seemed to accept it.

Mac Taylor had put Lindsay on modified assignment too, presumably because he didn't trust in her ability to cope in the field. She'd let her split with Danny completely blindside her, but Rachel wasn't about to follow the same path. She'd made a good attempt at moving on so far, but hadn't yet made that final break, despite what she'd told Ellen earlier. Now was the moment if ever there was one though. She wasn't going to waste any more time over this. If Danny wanted to throw his life away on this woman then so be it.

She drew in a deep breath and turned her gaze towards Lindsay. "Do you need me to wait?" she asked coolly.

"What?" Lindsay frowned in confusion, and then her expression cleared as understanding dawned. She shook her head. "No, no, it's okay. I'm sure somebody will give me a lift home later - or I can catch a cab if not."

Rachel nodded shortly. "I'll be off then." She switched her attention back to Danny, her expression softening in a little. "Get better soon, okay?"

"I'll try my best," he responded quietly.

With another curt nod, Rachel swept her titian hair back off her face and then turned and left the room, striding off down the corridor with purposeful determination.

"She thinks I'm pitiable," Lindsay commented dryly once they were alone. She'd not missed the flash of contempt in the other woman's eyes on observing her emotionally dishevelled state. "She doesn't understand why you put up with me." Her lips curled up into a wry grimace. "She knows you too well."

"She can't see what I see because she doesn't know the full story," Danny told her matter-of-factly. "She doesn't know about your past, or your illness." He sighed. "Does it really matter what she thinks?"

Lindsay shrugged. "It shouldn't, but it does somehow."

She looked away, recalling what Rachel had said about him not wanting any more children. Facts had to be faced – Rachel did know Danny, whether Lindsay liked it or not. As an outsider looking in, she would have wondered why he was with her too. Clingy, needy women were just not his style. She knew there was more to herself than that, but with her depression making her emotionally vulnerable at the moment, she did sometimes come across as the kind of woman that Danny would normally abhor. Of course Rikki Sandoval had been emotionally needy too, but that dalliance had been more about guilt on Danny's part than any kind of innate attraction to the woman herself.

"I want you, Lindsay," Danny said, oblivious to her angst-filled reverie. "What anyone else thinks is irrelevant." He closed his eyes wearily as a wave of exhaustion sapped the last of his remaining strength.

Taking in the pallor of his skin – he'd lost a few degrees of colour in the past few minutes – Lindsay knew that now wasn't the time for an emotional discussion about past relationships or second babies for that matter. Danny needed to rest and recuperate, and she needed to get her head on straight before she broached the subject with him.

Could she really give up her dream of second-time motherhood if Danny truly was content with the family unit that they already had? It was a sacrifice that she knew that she would make to hold onto the man she loved, but she wasn't sure whether she could stick to it without harbouring some kind of lingering resentment towards him. Question was: would that resentment end up slowly poisoning what they had?

She leaned down and lightly kissed his forehead. "Sleep now," she urged quietly, advice that Danny responded to with an unintelligible grunt of acquiescence. "I've just got to make a quick call. I'll be back in a few minutes, 'kay?"

Rising to her feet, she retrieved her cell from her coat pocket and moved towards the doorway, pausing to look back at her husband lying prone in the hospital bed before she left the room.

Sweet god, she loved him, but she loved her role as a mother too. Lucy was her pride and joy, but she was growing up way too fast for Lindsay's liking. She wanted another baby quickening in her womb and nuzzling intimately at her breast. She wanted to experience that journey of firsts – first smile, first word, first step – a second time around. She wanted her first-born to be the wonderful big sister she knew that she had the capacity to be, and she wanted her second-born to experience the irreplaceable bond that she shared with her own elder siblings. The three of them – her, Danny and Lucy – were a family unit for sure, but for Lindsay, they would never be a hundred percent complete unless they were four.

She sighed and firmly set those disturbing thoughts aside. She needed to focus on the here and now. The future could wait. Selecting the number she needed from her address book, she hit the call button and lifted the phone to her ear.

"Hey!" Flack's voice echoed hollowly as he answered her call. "Everything okay?"

His tone was a little guarded and she knew that he hadn't told Lucy anything yet. It had been the right decision, she felt. It was best that the little girl was kept in the dark until they had the appropriate answers to any questions that she might ask.

"Yes, everything's fine," she assured him. "A little worse than expected, but nothing a little R&R isn't going to fix."

"That's good," he returned, his voice filled with relief. "I was worried there for a moment."

"Yeah, me too," Lindsay responded quietly.

"Hi Mommy!" she heard Lucy's little voice pipe up in the background and knew they were on the hands-free in the car.

"Hey sweetie," she said warmly. "Did you have a good play-date with Lauren?"

"Yes – we plays magic kingdoms!"

Flack chuckled. "Hey the kid LARPs!" he quipped.

Lindsay laughed. "All four year olds LARP, Flack," she informed him loftily.

"_Man!_" he replied, making her smile. "So what am I doing with the little monster, huh?" he enquired. "Apart from taking her on a scenic tour of the Big Apple that is?"

"You better bring her here," Lindsay decided. "She needs to know what's going on and she might need her Mommy to give her a reassuring cuddle when she does."

"Why does Lucy need cuddles, Mommy?" her daughter immediately asked.

"Sharpest pencil in the box this one," Flack commented dryly. "I knew C.S.I plus C.S.I was a bad idea."

"You just didn't want to give up your wingman," Lindsay accused, knowing he was only joking.

"Well yeah – Adam doesn't exactly cut it in that department, you know?"

Lindsay laughed and then turned her attention back to her daughter. "Lucy baby – listen, I don't want you to worry but Daddy's in the hospital."

"A bad person hurt him?" Lucy asked with a slight tremor in her voice.

Lindsay sighed, wishing that she could shield her little girl from the dangers of her and Danny's chosen career, but knowing that it was something that she'd have to come to terms with, especially as she grew older and more aware of the true situation. At the moment, Lucy thought her Daddy was a bonafide hero and therefore practically invincible, but there would come a time when that no longer held true.

"Yes sweetie, a bad man hurt him," she confirmed.

"But the doctors are gonna make Daddy all better?"

"Yes, he has to stay in hospital for a little while but he'll come home soon."

"And the bad man is in jail?"

"Six feet under more like," Flack cut in.

"Flack!" Lindsay swiftly admonished him, glad that Lucy wouldn't understand the reference.

"Sorry," he said contritely. "Uncle Flack made sure the bad man was sent to jail, honey," he assured the little girl strapped into a borrowed booster seat in the back of his car.

"You locked him up and threw away the key like Daddy does?" Lucy double-checked.

"I sure did, and I'm _way_ better at it than Daddy is."

"_Nobody's_ better at it than Daddy," Lucy retorted loyally.

Lindsay laughed at Flack's sarcastic scoff. "Give it up," she advised him. "You're not going to persuade her otherwise."

"The kid needs educating in the realities of life," he told her.

"Maybe," Lindsay acknowledged with a tilt of her head. "But, trust me; this is one argument you're _never_ going to win."

"Fine, but at least you're willing to admit that I'm better with the hand-cuffs, right?"

There was a long, pregnant pause as the double meaning of his words slowly sank in. "And that didn't exactly come out the way I intended," he admitted in a mortified tone.

Lindsay giggled, her cheeks flushing pink. "So, moving swiftly on…" she prompted.

"We don't need to mention that little slip of the tongue to Messer, right?"

"Flack!"

He laughed. "All right, so me and the _seriously_ delusional Little Miss 'My Daddy's the Best' will see you in half an hour or so, okay?"

Lindsay smiled. "Okay," she agreed. "I'll see you very soon, Lucy-Lu."

"Okay. Bye-bye Mommy."

Lindsay ended the call and heard her name being called almost as soon as she lowered her phone.

"Mac," she said, holding out her hands to him as he approached. They exchanged a brief hug before stepping away from each other. "He's fine," Lindsay assured her concerned boss. "A bit spaced-out on painkillers at the moment, but otherwise he seems okay."

"Have you talked to his doctor?" Mac asked her.

"No, I was just going to see if I could have a word. Danny _says_ that they're just keeping him in for observation, but I wouldn't put it past him to bend the truth a little."

"He just doesn't want you to worry, Lindsay, that's all," Mac said in response to the slight note of complaint in her voice.

"I know, but I'd much rather know than not," she told him. "I know I'm not a hundred percent emotionally right now, but I _can_ cope, you know. Things are a whole lot better than they were a few weeks ago, believe me. I don't need to be handled as if I'm made of glass anymore."

Mac shot her an amused smile. "So I see," he said, "But all this has been a lot for Danny to adjust to. I think it's going to take him a while to get the balance right between being appropriately sensitive to your needs and being a little too overprotective of you."

Lindsay sighed as they approached the nurse's station. "I know," she said. "My family struggled with it at first too."

Mac placed a comforting hand against her back. "You'll figure it out," he assured her. "I have every faith in you both."

Lindsay shot him a grateful smile. "Thanks Mac."

Fifteen minutes later, reassured by the doctor's positive diagnosis, the two of them were heading back towards Danny's room when they were interrupted by the telltale patter of small feet.

"Mommy!" Lucy said, launching herself into her mother's arms.

"Hey baby!" Lindsay said, cuddling the little girl close.

Flack puffed to a halt in front of them. "Geez, she runs like the wind," he exclaimed, pressing his hand to his aching ribs.

"Can I see Daddy now?" Lucy asked, pulling away from her mother, her big blue eyes wide and questioning.

"Of course you can," Lindsay told her, "But he's not feeling too good right now so no jumping on him, okay?"

Lucy nodded solemnly. "Okay."

Unfortunately when they entered Danny's hospital room, the little girl immediately buried her head in the material of her mother's pants. "He looks all sick," she wailed tearfully. "I don't like it!"

Remembering her own reaction on seeing Danny in his current state, Lindsay bent and lifted her frightened daughter into her arms. "I know baby, but he'll be all right, I promise," she soothed.

She carried the little girl over to the bed and sat down, quietly calling Danny's name to rouse him. It took a moment, but he eventually opened his eyes and smiled affectionately at the two of them. "Well, if it isn't my two favourite girls," he greeted weakly.

"You be better soon, Daddy?" Lucy asked him in a small voice, her bottom lip quivering.

"Of course I will, pumpkin," he assured her. "Nothing keeps us Messer's laid up for long. I'll be up and about in no time, just you wait and see."

"See? I do you so," Lindsay said encouragingly, hugging her daughter close and kissing her baby-soft cheek.

Reassured, Lucy's natural inquisitiveness quickly reasserted itself. "Is that medicine?" she asked, pointing at the drip.

"Sure is," Danny confirmed, trying to sound as upbeat as possible. "Best medicine in the world!"

"I'll bet," Flack commented dryly. "You had us going there for while, buddy," he added as he approached the bed. "Don't do it again – it pisses me off."

"Don! Little Ears!" Lindsay swiftly admonished him.

"W-what?" Flack startled at her sharp tone and then realised what she was censoring him for. "Oh sorry."

He glanced over at Danny in complaint when she continued to give him the evil eye despite his apology for his language. "Geez! Real ball-buster your Mrs, isn't she?"

"FLACK!" Lindsay exclaimed in exasperation as Danny broke into helpless laughter. She glared at her husband. "It's not funny!"

"Come on Linds, it's not like she knows what it means," Flack pointed out.

"I know, but that doesn't mean that she isn't going to…"

"Mommy – what's a ball-buster?"

"…Ask," Lindsay concluded unnecessarily. "See – this is why we chose Mac as godfather and not you," she told Flack.

"And here's me thinking it was because of the fancy pad and First Grade Detective salary," Don quipped.

Lindsay shot him a disgusted look and turned to deal with her too-curious-for-her-own-good daughter. "You're too young to know that right now, sweetie," she said. "That's a grown-up word and not for little girls to use. If I ever hear it coming out of your mouth, you'll be straight into time-out, okay?"

"Okay Mommy." Lucy nodded. "Does that mean Uncle Flack gets a punishment?" she asked.

"It does," Lindsay replied. "Next time he comes to dinner, he has to wash all the dishes – by himself and by hand too. He's not allowed to use the dishwasher." She looked at Flack, a challenge in her brown eyes. "Is that understood?"

Flack quailed. "I think I'm scared," he remarked to Danny who was desperately trying to contain his laughter. Gun-ho enough to push his luck, Don switched his attention back to Lindsay. "You're gonna make me pay, aren't you?" he said resignedly.

"Oh, you think?" she told him sarcastically and then swiftly changed the subject knowing that dwelling on it was only going to stir Lucy's interest further.

"Do you think you could take Lucy to get something to eat?" she asked Mac, shooting a meaningful look at Danny who she could see was struggling to keep his eyes open in spite of his amusement over Flack's faux pas.

"Sure," Mac agreed easily, sensing her dilemma.

Lucy had needed to see her father to assure herself that he was okay, but Danny could do without having to maintain the appearance of near perfect health to keep her from worrying. Lindsay clearly wasn't ready to leave her husband's side just yet though, which meant that it was down to him to entertain his energetic little goddaughter for the time being.

"Take it easy and don't rush back to work before you're ready," he instructed Danny before he held out his hand to Lucy. "Come on honey – how about you and me go and get ourselves some dinner while Mommy stays here with Daddy?"

Lucy nodded. "Can I kiss it better, Daddy?" she asked him.

Danny smiled. "As long as you put that kiss right here," he replied, indicating his mouth with his good hand.

Lucy crawled towards him and planted a noisy kiss on his puckered lips. "That better?" she enquired.

"Much better," he assured her as she slipped down from the bed and took hold of Mac's outstretched hand. "I love you, munchkin."

"I love you too, Daddy," Lucy responded sweetly before obediently allowing her godfather to lead her from the room.

"I guess that's my cue to leave too," Flack said as Lindsay settled herself in the chair by the bed.

"Thanks Flack," she said gratefully as he turned for the door.

He grinned. "What? For corrupting your daughter?"

She laughed. "No, for being a friend as always," she told him warmly.

He pointed his finger at her and winked. "Next kid, I'm the godfather," he declared, not realising that he was treading on sensitive ground.

Not trusting herself to speak, Lindsay merely nodded her acknowledgement. After Flack had left, closing the door quietly behind him, she glanced over at Danny and discovered that he was already asleep. She let out a weary sigh. It was probably for the best. She wasn't sure she had the strength for any more emotional trauma today.

Slipping her hand into her husband's, she bent and kissed the back of his knuckles, thankful for the fact that he was alive and still with her. That was the only thing that really mattered in the end. Everything else was simply the icing on the cake…

_**To be continued…**_

_**A/N2: **I found it interesting how a lot of reviewers of the last chapter focused on why Rachel was called about Danny first rather than Lindsay when it was never really a big thing for me. I was more focused on how Lindsay might deal with the 'not knowing' aspect of the situation. I did briefly flirt with the idea of Danny forgetting to change his 'in case of emergency', but I decided that he wouldn't have even changed it to Rachel in the first place. He may have rushed into a relationship with her after splitting with Lindsay, but trusting decisions about your life to someone is a huge commitment and I don't think he'd have taken that step. _

_But that's just my opinion – each to their own, I say. That's the joy of reviews, I think - to see how what you've written has impacted on your readers. _

_Till next time then… CharmedBec x_


	38. The Miracle of Modern Medicine

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary:**The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi! Long time no update, I know. Got horribly stuck in the middle of this chapter, but after much banging my head against a brick wall, I eventually broke through the pain barrier with renewed inspiration. Hope it's worth the wait!

Some of Danny and Lindsay's conversations in this part are rather risqué so please be suitably warned. I thought it was time to ratchet up the sexual tension between them though!

Anyway, more Authors' notes at the end, but for now, let's get on with the show…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 38 – The Miracle of Modern Medicine**_

_**Late afternoon, the following day…**_

"Are you sure Stella is okay with this?" Danny enquired as he preceded Lindsay into the apartment. "I mean the four of us all crammed in here together is kind of invading her personal space, don't you think?"

"Danny – you can't manage alone right now," Lindsay protested as she stepped over the threshold after him and closed the door behind the two of them. "You were only discharged from the hospital this morning and the doctor said you needed to keep that arm as immobile as possible for the next few days so you don't pull the stitches."

"I know that," Danny responded somewhat tartly, "But I have a perfectly good apartment of my own, you know. You could have stayed there with me."

"Which was my original plan," Lindsay said, "Until Stella pointed out that the three of us living together like that might confuse Lucy."

Danny sat down gingerly on the sofa, trying not to jar his injured arm. "I guess I didn't think of that," he acknowledged with a sigh.

"I know; me neither," Lindsay said as she dropped the duffle bag containing his packed-up belongings on the floor by her feet. "But she's right, you know. It could easily have appeared to Lucy as if we were all moving back in together again, and we shouldn't give her that impression until we're properly ready to take that step. She knows that this is Stella's apartment though so she'll understand that you're only staying here while you recover."

She studied him more closely then, a little concerned by the way he was nursing his injured arm. He still looked pale, she thought, although he had significantly more colour in his cheeks than yesterday. She could tell from the deep crease in his brow that he was in pain though.

"Do you need one of those painkillers that the doctor prescribed you?" she asked him solicitously.

Danny shook his head. "No, no, I'm fine."

She sighed. "There's no reason for you to suffer unnecessarily, Danny," she quietly rebuked him. "This isn't a penance."

"I know that," he said, "But hey, I'm a man and we don't like to admit weakness, you know."

"Really?" Lindsay said, her eyebrows lifting sardonically. "In my experience, all men turn into miserable little boys who want their mama's whenever they suffer so much as a sniffle."

Danny grinned. "When we're ill maybe," he agreed with an incline of his head, "But this is different. This…" He indicated his bandaged arm, "… is a badge of honour and to be suffered with the proper fortitude."

Lindsay rolled her eyes. "Suit yourself," she said with a shrug.

She bent down to retrieve the duffle bag from the floor. "I'll go and unpack your things," she said as she straightened up again. "You relax and…" She cast about for something for him to do. "Watch some sport or something," she finally suggested, waving her hand at the TV.

"Babe?" Danny entreated as she headed for the hallway that led to the apartment's three bedrooms.

Clued into his less than honourable intentions by the telltale lilt in his voice, Lindsay paused where she was for a moment before grudgingly turning back. "What?" she demanded flatly.

Danny gazed beseechingly at her, his blue eyes the picture of feigned innocence. "Could you pass me the remote please?" he asked her, indicating the plastic controller only inches away on the low coffee table in front of him.

Lindsay's response to this plaintive appeal was understandably bleep-worthy and was exactly the sort of reaction that her husband had been after. "Do you speak to your mother with that mouth, Montana?" he called out after her as she turned abruptly on her heel and strode off down the hallway to her bedroom, patently ignoring the hoots of laughter that followed in her wake.

Shaking her head with a wry smile, Lindsay firmly shut the door on her errant partner, and then heaved the duffle bag onto the bed and began to unpack. Danny knew how to play her that was for sure, but at least it meant that their relationship was never dull. He made her laugh and didn't they say that laughter was the best medicine?

Perhaps that's what had been missing from her relationships before Danny, she mused as she stashed his things in the drawer that she'd cleared out for him that morning. Maybe that was why she was managing to get through her most recent bout of depression without her family in Montana's day-to-day support.

In the past, she'd relied heavily on them to pull her through the worst of it, but it was Danny who was her rock this time around. He was serious when she needed him to be, but also did everything in his power to keep her spirits up too. She needed that from him, she realised. She needed him to chivvy her out of hopelessness and help her focus on the positives instead. She did occasionally worry that he might still pull the rug out from under her while she wasn't looking, but she was gradually learning a greater faith in his constancy.

That just left their possible difference of opinion over a second child to contend with. She'd considered bringing it up in their next therapy session, but wasn't quite sure whether she wanted to take that route. As much as therapy had been - and continued to be - effective for the two of them, she didn't want them to have to rely on it forever. At some point they were going to have to negotiate the obstacles in their marriage by themselves, maybe now was the time to start.

So far, the counselling had focused on exploring their past issues so this was going to be the first real test of their renewed commitment to one another. She wanted to see whether they could talk things over and reach a satisfactory conclusion without their therapist's help therefore. It said a lot that she was willing to proceed in that manner actually. It meant that her confidence in their ability to communicate had gained in leaps and bounds over the past few weeks.

It was certainly a sharp contrast to her feelings when she'd discovered she was pregnant with Lucy. She remembered how scared she'd been about telling Danny, how unsure of his reaction she'd been, and how apprehensive she'd felt about the life-changing decisions that they would have to make at a time when their relationship was anything but stable.

When she'd finally worked up the courage to confess her predicament, they'd talked things over more openly than she'd expected, but had still only skated over the surface of their problems. The feeling of relief that he at least loved her enough to stick around had blinded her to the papered-over cracks in their relationship at the time. She'd been so unsure of his feelings for her that the heady discovery that he really did love her after all had carried her through the remaining months of her pregnancy and the first couple of years of their marriage without incident.

Then they'd hit a rocky patch, as most marriages were prone to go through at some point in their life cycle, and – predictably - it had all fallen apart. Her insecurities had taken over and their fragile relationship had quickly unravelled at the seams, leading them firstly to an unwanted and protracted separation and now, on reconciliation, forcing them to start again from scratch.

They were doing it though. Those few short years of happy domesticity had cemented their love to a point where neither was willing to let it go without a fight. If their relationship had shattered any earlier than it had, then Lindsay wasn't sure whether it would have survived the blow. Would she have committed enough of her heart to experience those vital second thoughts about their impending divorce? Would Danny have been able to forgive her for what she'd put him through and love her enough to want to try again? Or would he have simply cut his losses and started a new life with Rachel instead?

She sighed. Why was she still dwelling on that? Danny didn't want Rachel. He'd chosen to come back to her when he could have just as easily walked away. They'd made it through the nightmare of their separation and were now rebuilding home and hearth together. He loved her and she loved him, nothing else mattered.

Galvanised into action by her internal pep talk, she quickly completed the rest of the unpacking, finishing up by hanging Danny's shirts and jeans in the closet beside her own clothes. It felt good to see their belongings hanging together side-by-side like that. There was a strange kind of permanence to it, almost as if the synergy of the hanging garments was a metaphor for their slowly healing relationship.

As she left the bedroom and headed back towards the lounge a couple of minutes later, she heard the distinctive scrape of a key in the lock, quickly followed by her daughter's excited squeal of "Daddy!"

"Auntie Stella says we hafta take care of you while you get better," Lucy was telling her father as Lindsay rejoined them.

The little girl glanced over at Stella, who had volunteered to baby-sit while Lindsay picked up Danny from the hospital and went with him to his apartment to pack up his things. "Can we show Daddy the surprise now?" she asked, her blue eyes alight with excited anticipation.

Stella smiled. "I think so," she agreed. She held out her hand to the little girl. "Shall we go and get ready?"

"This wasn't my idea by the way," she said over her shoulder to Danny and Lindsay as Lucy dragged her out of the room with a four year old's typically overt level of enthusiasm.

"I think I'm scared," Danny remarked dryly to Lindsay as he watched them go.

"You should be encouraging our daughter's creativity," she chastised him.

He eyed her sceptically. "Honey, I think it's well-developed enough," he assured her knowingly.

Lindsay laughed. "Well, don't look at me - she got it from you," she accused.

Danny shook his head in denial. "Uh-huh, I think not Miss Queen of the Lab Demonstration," he contradicted.

Lindsay smiled. "Haven't we had this debate before?" she asked him.

"Frequently," Danny replied, "But we never seem to reach a satisfactory conclusion, do we?"

"Speak for yourself," Lindsay said, placing her hands on her hips in a gesture of defiance. "I think it's pretty clear myself - I'm right and you're wrong. Period."

"Oh? Is that so?" Danny said, snagging her wrist with his good hand and tugging her down beside him. He brushed her hair out of her eyes. "You don't win that easily, you know," he told her. "I think this is one debate that's gonna last a lifetime."

"I certainly hope so," Lindsay declared fervently, instinctively leaning in closer to him as their gazes met and electricity sparked between.

Drawn like a moth to the proverbial flame, Danny bridged the rest of the gap between them and pressed his lips to hers. Curling her hand around the nape of his neck, Lindsay responded to his kiss with ardent enthusiasm, sucking them both into a vortex of spiralling need.

Lucy's ringing tones shattered their hazy reverie all too prematurely however. "Daddy, Mommy, I ready!" she sang from the hallway.

Smiling rather sheepishly at each other, they reluctantly drew apart, straightening their slightly mussed clothing as they awaited their daughter's triumphant entrance.

"Wow!" Danny remarked as the little girl came racing back into the room, decked from head-to-toe in a pint-sized nurse's uniform.

"I gonna look after Daddy until he gets better," Lucy announced, beaming at him like the cat that had got the cream.

Danny had to bite his bottom lip to suppress an amused chuckle. "So I see."

"In my defence, I did suggest the doctor's outfit," Stella said to Lindsay as she followed the little girl back into the room. "I figured I ought to do my bit in the interests of encouraging the necessary ambition, but your daughter knows her own mind and was having none of it."

"I can imagine," Lindsay said with a smile, knowing how stubborn Lucy could be when she'd set her mind on something.

Personally, she thought her daughter looked rather sweet and knew exactly why Lucy had gone for the nurse's uniform rather than a doctor's outfit. She was Daddy's little princess and she had wanted to look pretty for him. A lab-coat and stethoscope just didn't quite have the same effect as the little blue dress with its wide belt, clip-on nurse's watch, matching hat and accompanying first-aid bag. At least the makers had ensured that the dress was a suitable length for a pre-schooler and for that Lindsay was profoundly grateful.

"Look Daddy, it's got real bandages and _everything_!" Lucy exclaimed, popping open the clasp on the small bag and showing him the contents. "I don't think the doctors at the hospital gave you the best one though," she said, frowning critically at the pristine white bandage around his upper arm. "It's supposed to have a red cross on it – see." She showed him the evidence from her toy.

Danny did laugh then. "Guess we didn't tip 'em enough," he quipped to his wife.

"Guess not," she concurred with a smile.

"I listen to your heart with this," Lucy explained, withdrawing the stethoscope from the bag and presenting it to him, "And this is to check how hot you are." She waved a plastic wand in his face, almost taking his eye out with it. "'Cus you get all hot when you're sick," she finished knowledgeably.

Danny smiled down into his daughter's sweetly cherubim face. "I think Daddy's gonna get better in no time at all with you looking after him," he declared, affectionately poking her cute little button nose with the tip of his forefinger.

She smiled happily at him. "Shall I make you a dwink now?" she asked him. "It'll only be a pretend one, cus I not allowed to play in the kitchen, but Mommy could make you a real one later."

Danny nodded. "I think that'd be just what the doctor ordered," he decided.

"Okay!" Lucy said, and then scampered off towards her bedroom and the role-playing delights of her toy tea-set.

"So – do they do those costumes in adult sizes?" Danny remarked casually to Stella once the little girl was safely out of earshot. He shot a speculative glance at Lindsay, the expression in his blue eyes a little too frank for comfort. "In white maybe?"

"Danny!" Lindsay protested, her cheeks growing hot. She couldn't believe that he'd suggested such a thing in front of their friend!

Stella, used to Danny's rather ribald sense of humour, didn't bat an eyelid however. In fact, it warmed her to see him teasing his wife in this way. Love was the lynchpin of any marriage, but a healthy dose of sexual passion didn't go amiss either. The level of flirty banter between the two of them was a barometer to the healthiness of their relationship, whether they knew it or not.

It seemed to Stella that they'd turned some sort of corner in the last couple of weeks. Something profound had shifted between them. Both were significantly more relaxed within themselves, and they were a lot more comfortable in each other's company as well. They obviously still had their difficulties to overcome, but they were clearly more confident in their ability to conquer them. Personally, she'd always had faith that they had what it took to make their marriage work, but it was good to see that they were finally starting to believe it themselves too.

"How about I make us that drink?" she suggested with a smile. Not waiting for them to confirm or deny; she headed for the kitchen, leaving Lindsay to deal with her wayward husband in whatever way she saw fit.

"I can't believe you said that!" Lindsay burst out, her cheeks still flaming.

Danny laughed. "I really don't think Stella's that easily offended, babe," he said in a rather lame attempt at justifying his actions.

"I know but still…" She shot him a look filled with censure.

"What?" he asked, his eyebrow lifted in question. "You wouldn't do it?" He gazed at disarmingly. "Not even for me?" he enquired in a beguiling tone.

She stared at him, not sure whether he was serious or not. "It's so cliché," she eventually said.

Danny laughed at her prim tone. "True," he admitted, his blue eyes twinkling merrily. "I guess it's fortunate that I have a little more imagination than that then, huh?"

Lindsay relaxed. It wasn't that she wouldn't consider it, but it really wasn't her thing all the same. If she was going to dress up for her man, then elegant but sexy lingerie was her modus operandi. Danny had always been _very_ appreciative of that approach in the past. Maybe _she_ was the one lacking in imagination though? That thought immediately brought an unwanted frown back to her face.

"Don't question yourself," Danny said, seeing all this in her darkening expression. "I already told you, I've never had anything to complain about in that area."

"I know you did but…"

He silenced her with a finger over her lips. "No buts," he said firmly. "I was only teasing before. Sure it might be fun, but not if you're not comfortable with it. And besides," he added. "I think talking and fantasising about it probably beats experiencing the reality of it anyhow."

Lindsay laughed. "You're a mass of contradiction, Danny Messer," she accused good-naturedly because she knew he was speaking the truth.

"It's like I'm a hormonal teenager all over again," he told her ruefully. "I don't think I've wanted a woman this bad for twenty years."

"What about the time before we were dating?" Lindsay asked him, "When we were just good friends?"

Danny's lips twisted into a faintly mocking smile at that. "I don't think you and me were ever 'just good friends' do you?" he said. "And besides, that was different. I didn't know what to expect then. Now I do and the waiting is torture, believe me."

"I thought we agreed that it was time for us to renew that part of our relationship though?" Lindsay said.

"We did," Danny concurred, "But we also said we'd ease our way back into it, take the time to make it special."

"And we're doing that," Lindsay pointed out.

"Well yeah," her husband agreed, "But I'm a little physically impaired right now in case you hadn't noticed."

Lindsay giggled. "A bullet in the arm makes you impotent, does it?" she enquired laughingly.

Danny shot her a look. "Not if a few minutes ago was anything to go by, no," he told her frankly, "But it _would_ mean that you'd have to do most of the work."

"I don't mind," she responded coyly.

"Yeah well, I do," he said, reaching out and curling the fingers of his good hand around one of hers. He brought their joined fingers to his lips and lightly kissed the centre of her palm. "I want the first time to be about you."

"Danny…"

"I need to show you how beautiful you are," he interrupted, making her heart squeeze inside her chest. She looked away as the emotions brought on by his words caused tears to spring to her eyes and a restrictive lump to lodge in the back of her throat.

Danny used his fingertips against the side of her face to bring her averted gaze back to his. "I want to show you and I want you to truly believe it," he went on.

She smiled at him through her tears. "I want that too," she whispered in return. "You know I do."

Leaning forward, Danny pressed his lips to her forehead and then sighed as the telltale patter of small feet cut short their emotional tête-à-tête once more.

"Daddy – I got your dwink," Lucy announced as she carried a brightly coloured plastic tray into the room. On it was a sunflower yellow teapot and three plastic cups in red, blue and green. She set her tray down on the floor in front of the sofa and then knelt down beside it to pour the imaginary tea. Her little rosebud lips pursed in concentration as she carefully tipped the plastic teapot even though there was no liquid inside to spill.

Danny grinned, marvelling at the amazing richness of a child's imagination. If only such innocence could remain in later life, he mused, they'd probably all be a lot happier if it did. To take such pleasure in the simple things in life was mainly a child's prerogative however - although admittedly you did get to experience it second-hand as a parent, he thought as he took the offered cup from Lucy's outstretched hands, brought it to his lips and pretended to drink.

"Mmm," he murmured expansively. "I think you've got a career in catering ahead of you, Lucy-Lu. You could be a nurse _and _a coffee-shop owner."

Lucy nodded enthusiastically, her honey-blonde curls bouncing with the movement. "An' I could make sick animals better too!" she declared, her blue eyes shining.

Danny chuckled at his daughter's incongruous mix of future ambitions. "Well, it's always good to aim high, I guess," he remarked.

"Can I put my bandage on your ouchie arm?" Lucy asked him then.

Danny hesitated, not wanting to refuse her request, but also aware that his daughter wasn't the most gentle of beings sometimes. His arm was throbbing painfully and he was beginning to regret refusing that painkiller earlier.

"Sweetie, I think you'd better let Mommy help you with that," Lindsay said, solving his dilemma for him. "We don't want to hurt Daddy now do we?"

"No." Lucy shook her head solemnly. "Does it hurt bad?" she asked her father as she clambered up onto the sofa between her parents.

"I've suffered worse," he assured her.

"But it hurts a lot more than when you fall over and scrape your knees," Lindsay warned the little girl, "So we've got to be extra gentle, okay?"

Lucy nodded obediently. "Can I put it on and Mommy sticks it?" she asked.

"I think that would be best," Lindsay agreed, but caught hold of her daughter's hands to guide her nonetheless. She'd seen the wariness in Danny's eyes and knew the pain must be bothering him more than he was letting on. For once though, Lucy didn't go at the task like a bull in a china shop and instead showed an amazing amount of restraint for one so young.

"Is that better?" the little girl asked her father as Lindsay carefully secured the Velcro on the back of the bandage.

"It feels a lot better all ready," he replied.

"That's cus it's a magic bandage," Lucy told him.

Danny widened his eyes exaggeratedly at this pronouncement. "It is, huh? Well, how about that."

"It's got special powers that makes hurts get better quicker," Lucy went on, warming to her subject.

"Quite the medical advancement then," Danny joked to Lindsay who smiled and leaned in to kiss his cheek. "I love you," she murmured in his ear before she drew back.

He shot her a warmly affectionate smile while Lucy chattered on oblivious. "… and there are only like… five…" The little girl held up her right hand, spreading her small fingers and stubby thumb to illustrate the number. "…in the world, that's why doctors in hospitals don't know about them."

"Knew there had to be a reason," Danny said sidelong to his wife, his eyes dancing with suppressed amusement.

"Behave," she chided him even though his gentle sarcasm sailed right over the wide-eyed Lucy's head.

As their daughter prattled on, telling them a fantastically convoluted tale of good witches, fairies and enchanted bandages, Lindsay silently rose from the sofa and moved to the other side of her husband. Sitting back down again, she nestled her head against his shoulder as he put his good arm around her and drew her close against his side.

Stella, coming in from the kitchen with a tray of steaming mugs a few minutes later, observed this intimate family tableau from the doorway and then quietly retreated, leaving the two indulgent parents cocooned in their small daughter's imaginative world of make-believe. Although she knew they would have included her without a second thought, she felt they needed those precious moments alone right now.

Captive in her own kitchen by her own innate kindness, she sat at the round table in the corner with her cup of tea. While she drank, she flicked through one of the glossy women's magazines that were her secret guilty pleasure before rising to stash the used crockery in the dishwasher when she was done. Never one to remain idle, she then made a start on that evening's meal, drawing on her Greek roots for culinary inspiration.

She also sent a text to Mac asking if he wanted to join them and her colleague - having just worked an extended shift to cover Danny's unexpected absence - gratefully accepted the invite with a promise to bring a suitably calorific dessert to round the meal off.

Humming contentedly to herself, Stella began to chop vegetables for the main course, suddenly looking forward to the evening a lot more than she had done previously. She would miss Lindsay and Lucy when they were gone, she realised, even though she would be grateful for the recovery of her personal space too.

It was nice to have someone to come home to at night though. The last couple of months of sharing her apartment with her colleague and her gorgeous little girl had stirred up Stella's own yearning for a family. She'd always been very career-orientated before, maybe it was about time she took a step back and focused on her personal life a little more.

Of course if what had happened to Danny was anything to go by, love crept up on you when you were least expecting it. One day you could be a perfectly happy singleton with no plans for settling down, the next, a certain someone exploded into your life and you were on a rollercoaster ride towards marriage and kids before you had time to blink.

Fate played unexpected games with your life sometimes. Rather than deliberately going out looking for it, perhaps she should simply wait and see what life had in store for her instead…

**OOOOOO**

_**An hour later…**_

"Even Lucy's better at dressing herself than this!" Danny exclaimed in exasperation. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, while Lindsay helped him carefully manoeuvre his t-shirt off over his head.

"Well, at least you can manage your fly by yourself," Lindsay joked in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere a little. She knew how frustrating he must find his temporary disability, but she herself was just grateful that the bullet hadn't caused any serious damage.

"Well, I wouldn't mind your help with _that_," Danny replied with a salacious grin, her light-hearted admonishment chivvying him out of his bad mood.

"Now why does that not surprise me?" she said in a long-suffering tone.

"Because you know me," he countered with an offhanded shrug.

"Mmm, unfortunately so," she agreed as she turned for the closet.

"Should I be worried that my attempts at seduction are falling a little flat?" he asked her, a hint of amusement colouring his tone.

She smiled over her shoulder at him. "If that's all you've got then yes," she said. "Fortunately, I happen to know there's a lot more to your repertoire than that so I don't think you've struck out just yet."

Danny laughed. "Good to know," he said, and then looked up at her enquiringly when she turned back towards him with one of his best shirts in her hands. "Do I have to dress up for dinner every night while I'm here?" he asked her with a note of complaint in his voice.

"No," Lindsay replied, looking down her nose at him, "But Stella's gone to a lot of trouble and Mac's coming over so…"

"You'd prefer it if I didn't look like I've been living out of a cardboard box for the past few weeks?" he finished for her.

"Exactly," she concurred as she helped him into his shirt and then sat down next to him on the bed to deal with the buttons for him.

"You'll need a shave soon," she remarked, lifting her hand to touch his roughened cheek.

"I know," he agreed, "But I don't think it's gonna happen right now, not with my arm the way it is. I might accidentally sever my jugular or something." He leaned in to nuzzle at her neck. "I guess you're just gonna have to put up with kissing a grizzly-bear for a while instead."

Lindsay giggled and swatted him away. "I could do it for you," she offered, "Although I don't know how to do that part-shaved effect you've got going on," she added with a slight frown.

Danny laughed. "Babe, I haven't been entirely clean-shaven for years, my face'd get cold!"

"I never seen your whole face," Lindsay murmured thoughtfully, running a forefinger down the profile of his nose. "I'd like to see your whole face, I think."

Danny narrowed his eyes at her. "You'd prefer me clean-shaven?" he asked her.

She cupped his face in palms and lightly kissed him. "I'd prefer you to be who you are," she said, "But it _would_ be interesting to see what you look like without the facial hair. Might be kind of sexy," she added, lowering her eyelashes coquettishly.

Danny considered. A potent image of her standing between his legs preparing to lather up his face rose unbidden into his mind. His fertile imagination created the added bonus of the matching set of underwear and sheer robe that she was wearing. He shifted a little as his body instantly reacted to that fantasy image. Jesus! She was driving him crazy, and, just his luck, an idiot with a gun had put the kibosh on any immediate assuaging of that need.

He'd meant what he'd said earlier, you see, he wanted the renewal of their physical intimacy to be about Lindsay initially. He knew that she needed to gain greater confidence in her ability to please him too, but felt that she needed to accept herself as a desirable woman first. If she believed that she was beautiful in his eyes then the necessary upswing in her self-confidence would be a natural progression on from that.

"Sexy, huh?" he said, running his fingers through her hair and tugging her closer. "The idea certainly appeals I have to admit," he murmured, fluttering his lips seductively over hers, "But I think we're going to have to forgo that particular pleasure - for tonight at least anyway."

"We are?" she questioned a little breathlessly.

"Afraid so," he responded with faux solemnity. "We'll need a lot more time than we've got available right now, and we err… need to be more suitably – umm – dressed for the occasion too."

"Undressed, you mean," she responded knowingly.

He grinned. "You catch on quick."

She giggled. "I know you, remember?"

"Mmm," he said in a non-committal tone and then took the opportunity to kiss her more thoroughly, conscious that as much as he'd love to lock the bedroom door so it was just the two of them for the rest of the evening, their responsibilities as parents and friends would have to take precedence right now.

"One of us needs to check on Lucy," Lindsay said when she'd reluctantly untangled herself from her husband's embrace and finished fastening the last of his shirt buttons for him. "Make sure she's not up to any mischief."

"I'll go," Danny offered as she helped him ease his arm back into its sling. "I'm not sure I'm in any condition to watch you get changed right now. My self-restraint is all shot to pieces."

Lindsay laughed, feeling a sudden glow of happiness bubble up inside her. Despite her worries that they were not on the same page as far as a second child was concerned, she somehow knew they'd get through it. They'd made it this far, hadn't they? If the events of yesterday had taught her anything, it was that it was all irrelevant if Danny wasn't by her side.

She wanted to be a mother again, but there was only one man she wanted as the father of her child. No other would do. If it wasn't what he wanted then she'd have to reconsider. It'd be a crushing disappointment, no doubt about it, but in the grand scheme of things was it really the most important consideration?

The simple answer was no. "I love you," she told him as she reached that crucial resolve.

Danny dropped a kiss into her hair as he rose to his feet. "Right back at ya, babe," he said as he left the room in search of their daughter. "Right back at ya…"

_**To be continued…**_

_**A/N2: **Okay so this chapter went off on a completely different tangent to the one I'd originally planned. It was supposed to properly address the second baby issue, but ended up in the *ahem* bedroom so to speak instead! _

_Ah well, whatever it takes to beat writers block, huh? :-D_

_CharmedBec x_


	39. Make the Most of Every Day

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary:**The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hey! Another new chapter for you :-)

There are some fairly adult scenes in this part. I've tried to keep them within the story's rating, but please be suitably warned all the same.

Anyway that said; time to get on with the show…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 39 – Make the Most of Every Day**_

_**A week later…**_

"Babe, do you think we could live here with Stella forever?" Danny murmured in his wife's ear as he felt her stir into belated wakefulness.

Stretching luxuriously, Lindsay turned over onto her back and looked up into his familiar blue eyes. "Why?" she asked him, blinking owlishly as she cleared her vision of the last remnants of sleep.

Danny was propped up on his good arm, smiling down into her sleep-flushed face. His injured shoulder was now out of its sling, but it remained heavily bandaged nonetheless. He'd regained a lot of the movement in his shoulder and upper arm over the past few days, but his recovery was still rather slow-going despite that. The doctors had assured them that the lingering muscular apathy was purely down to temporary swelling rather than any permanent nerve damage however, a fact for which they were both profoundly grateful.

"You're not on shift today, right?" Danny asked her.

"Right," she concurred slowly, not following his train of thought.

"And I'm still on sick leave because of this damn thing," he said, indicating his bandaged arm with a grimace of distaste.

Lindsay nodded, still somewhat nonplussed by the topic of conversation. "Yeah - so?"

Danny placed a finger over her lips. "Listen," he instructed in a hushed tone.

They both fell silent for a moment. "I can't hear anything," Lindsay whispered, infected by her husband's apparent need for quiet.

Danny nodded, a broad smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "Exactly," he said with obvious satisfaction. "It's eight-fifteen and not a peep."

"Lucy!" Lindsay suddenly exclaimed, sitting bolt upright in bed as the reality of the situation crashed in on her. "She's supposed to be at pre-school in like twenty minutes! Oh my God, I can't believe I slept in! It's all your fault," she accused before she could think better of it.

Danny laughed, seemingly unconcerned by her plight. "It is? How's that?" he asked in an annoyingly laid-back tone.

"Keeping me up half the night, the way you have been doing, it's…" Lindsay stopped abruptly when she realised what she was saying.

Truth was she wouldn't have swapped the last few nights with Danny for anything else in the world. There was just something about cuddling up in bed together that prompted a deeper level of intimacy between them. With sex still off the agenda, they'd opened up to each other verbally instead, and, as a result, she'd learned more about the inner psyche of the man she'd married in the past week than she had in the entire rest of the time she'd known him.

"I'm sorry," she apologised. "If Lucy's late for pre-school because you kept me up, it was more than worth it, believe me."

Danny smiled warmly at her. "I'm glad to hear it, but relax, she's not gonna be late. I went to the bathroom earlier and ran into Stella in the hallway. She said she would get Lucy up and drop her off at pre-school for us. She told me to tell you to enjoy the lie-in. So I repeat – is it okay if we live here with her forever?"

Her panic receding, Lindsay relaxed back against the pillows with a sigh of relief. "You could have told me that before now," she groused.

Danny grinned. "Why when watching you flap was so much more fun?"

"I don't think I like you anymore," she told him with an exaggerated pout.

"Liar!" he immediately shot back, making her laugh.

Rolling towards him, she lifted her hand to stroke his stubbly cheek. "You need another shave," she decided.

He turned his head to kiss the tips of her fingers. "You're really into the clean-shaven look, huh?"

She cocked her head to one side and considered. "Well, it does make a nice change," she concluded thoughtfully, "But I'm not sure it's really you to be honest. I was right though – it _is_ sexy." She leaned forward and brushed her lips over his. "Hot as hell in fact," she concluded in a tantalisingly husky tone.

"Is that the end result or the actual process?" Danny teased. "Because - my gorgeous wife - I think you get off more on having that kind of power over me than anything else."

Lindsay prodded him in the chest in retaliation. "I haven't heard you complaining," she pointed out. "In actual fact, that good hand of yours has been _very_ complimentary about my barber skills."

Danny laughed, a wicked glint entering his eyes. It was true - keeping his hands to himself had been an exercise in futility when she looked so cute and sexy with her kissable lips all pursed up in concentration. How was he supposed to _not_ touch her when she was lavishing so much attention on him, huh? A healthy red-blooded male could only take so much provocation after all.

His wife's increased level of flirty playfulness had been a constant source of delight to him over the past few days. It reminded him of the couple that they used to be before Ruben Sandoval's death had torn their world apart at the seams. They'd discovered a deeper, more profound love in the years that had followed that painful period, but sadly had never fully regained the easy connection that had defined their first few months together.

Everything was finally starting to fall into place though. Maybe they weren't quite ready to move back in with each other yet, but he was enjoying this little taster of things to come all the same. He'd forgotten how effortlessly Lindsay slotted into his day-to-day life. Rachel had always felt like a visitor in his home – a welcome one, for sure, but a visitor nonetheless. When he was with Lindsay though, he was just… well… home. The location didn't matter; home was simply where she was.

There was only one blot on their horizon and what concerned him the most was that he still wasn't entirely sure of its source. Every so often he'd feel Lindsay's speculative eyes upon him and the expression in them was not a happy one. Something was bothering her, but she was yet to confide in him what that was. She'd made a couple of abortive attempts at it so far, but something had always held her back, prompting her to change the subject at the last minute.

He'd not pressed the issue because he'd wanted her to come to him, but he was beginning to realise that that wasn't the best way to approach the situation. It didn't really matter who brought the subject up, just as long as they confronted and dealt with whatever the problem was. If something was wrong then it was much better 'out than in' as his Mama would say. One way or another he was going to find out what was on her mind. Her silence on the matter had gone on for too long now for him to continue to ignore it the way he had been doing.

He couldn't face such endeavours on an empty stomach though so… "Breakfast?" he enquired brightly.

"That'd be nice." Lindsay smiled beatifically at him. "Sweet of you to offer." She closed her eyes and snuggled back down under the comforter. "Call me when it's ready, won't you, babe?"

Grumbling under his breath, Danny tossed back the covers and rose from the bed, shivering a little at the slight chill in the air. Winter was fast approaching and wandering around the apartment in bare feet and boxers wasn't as pleasant as it was during the summer months. After pulling on a pair of his ubiquitous sweatpants, he donned his ratty Police Academy t-shirt and then added a thick pair of socks to the ensemble before making his way through into the apartment's kitchen to sort out breakfast for the two of them.

After re-filling the coffee pot and rummaging around in the refrigerator, he finally settled on scrambled eggs on toast with a side of crispy bacon. He knew Lindsay might complain about the calorie-fest on offer when she usually only indulged in such treats at the weekend, but he felt that the increasingly frosty weather outside coupled with the conversation that he was determined they would have today meant that she could forgo her breakfast health-kick just this once. She'd need some proper sustenance in her if she was to get through the day.

Somewhat to his surprise however, Lindsay made no comment when he set the plate down in front of her. Instead, she picked up her knife and fork and tucked into the food with gusto. Going back to the counter to fill his own plate, he smiled indulgently at her while she ate. She'd donned a thick, fluffy robe and jammed her little feet into a pair of enormous, fuzzy bunny slippers. With her hair still mussed from sleep, traditionally sexy she wasn't, but he felt a massive surge of affection for her nonetheless.

"What?" she asked, her fork pausing halfway to her mouth as she sensed his eyes upon her.

"Nothing," he said as he returned to the table with his food. He stroked an affectionate hand over her hair and bent to kiss the top of her head before he sat down. "I was just thinking how beautiful you are that's all."

A delicate blush rose to the apples of her cheeks. "Sweet-talker," she accused, although he could see the shy delight in her eyes at the compliment. Note to self, Danny thought. Make sure you tell her that a lot more often.

Lindsay glanced down at her current attire and a little frown appeared between her eyebrows. "I suppose I should have made more of an effort," she said.

He laughed. "Why?"

"Danny," she said as if speaking to an errant child. "I'm wearing bunny slippers!"

"I'd noticed," he commented dryly. "So?"

"Well, they're not exactly sexy, are they?" she pointed out.

"No," he concurred, "But strangely endearing despite their lack of lust appeal."

She giggled. "Seriously?" she asked, her eyebrows disappearing into her hairline.

Danny lowered his cutlery back down to the table. "Lindsay look, don't get me wrong, I _definitely_ appreciate you making the effort in that respect, but I don't expect it twenty-four-seven. Women who sneak out of bed at some ungodly hour in the morning to pretty themselves up drive me mad if you wanna know the truth. You've never been one of them so don't start now."

"Right, so bed hair is good then?"

"Bed hair is honest," he told her.

"And bunny slippers are the new Jimmy Choo's?" she enquired impishly.

Danny laughed. "Well, that might be taking it a bit far," he said with a grin. "What made you buy them anyway?" he asked out of curiosity. He was aware that she had a penchant for comfy pyjamas, but he'd never known her to indulge in animal slippers before.

"They were a birthday present from Lucy," Lindsay told him. "Megan apologised profusely, but apparently she couldn't persuade our daughter that they weren't the height of New York chic." She giggled. "She was horrified when I got all teary-eyed over them too. I know it was silly, but they were the first real present that Lucy had ever gotten me. Before it was always someone else buying me something on her behalf, but she'd chosen these herself so that made them special, you know?"

"Yeah, I know," Danny said. He smiled rather sadly at her. "I'm sorry I didn't get to see it," he said, his voice tinged with regret.

He was even sorrier that he hadn't been the one to take Lucy on that particular shopping trip. It must have been Lindsay's first birthday after their split – there'd been two such anniversaries while they'd been apart, but he was still so messed up on the first of those that he hadn't even considered taking their daughter shopping for a present. It hadn't been a deliberate act of punishment on his part, more an oversight as he struggled to get his head together after their break up. He was glad that somebody had stepped in to fill the breach though; it would have been just awful if they hadn't.

He sighed. "I missed so much."

"We both did, Danny," Lindsay said softly, "But it can't be undone. All we can do is put it behind us and make the most of every day from now on."

Danny studied her for a long moment as he pondered her words and waited patiently for her to finish her food. When she finally set her knife and fork aside, he rose from the table and held out his hand to her in invitation. "Come with me," he said, the words more of a command than an entreaty.

Unsure of what he had in mind, but willing to give herself over to his mercy, Lindsay slid her fingers into his and allowed him to lead her from the kitchen. Hands entwined, they passed through the apartment's main living space and then moved on into the family bathroom down the hall.

"Danny," Lindsay murmured a little apprehensively as he shut the door behind them and turned to face her. His expression was one of determined resolve and her stomach lurched in nervous anticipation at what he had in store for her.

"Ssh," he commanded, placing a staying finger over her lips to quieten her protest.

Reaching behind his head with his good arm, he grabbed the neck of his t-shirt and pulled it off over his head, tossing it to one side with casual indifference. While her heart leapt into her throat at the sight of his bared chest, his hands went determinedly to the belt of her robe. After untying the unwieldy knot, he pushed the bulky garment off her shoulders leaving her standing before him in just her skimpy nightdress.

"What are you doing?" she asked in a hushed tone when he knelt to remove the bunny slippers from her feet.

"Making the most of every day," he told her as he stood back up again and moved in close.

She could feel his body-heat pulsing in delicious waves over her chilled flesh while he threaded his fingers through her hair and tilted her face up to his with his thumbs. Their eyes met for a long intense moment before he finally lowered his mouth to hers and stole the breath from her lungs with a kiss that was destined to have only one possible conclusion…

**OOOOOO**

_**Some time later…**_

Emerging from her hazy dream-world like the first rays of the sun breaking through the early morning mist, Lindsay kept her eyes closed and allowed her remaining senses to remind her of where she was and whom she was with. Her body felt wonderfully supple and relaxed, and the heavy weight of Danny's arm flung possessively across her middle engendered a deep sense of belonging that she hadn't felt in a long time now.

Opening her eyes, she turned on her side so that she could better study her husband's profile on the pillow beside her. He was still asleep, his breath puffing rhythmically from between his parted lips. She instinctively lifted her hand to trace the contours of his face with her fingers, but then let it drop, not wanting to wake him from his slumber just yet. She was content to simply lie here next to him and rewind the events of the last couple of hours in her mind instead.

After what had arguably been the most erotic shower that she'd ever experienced, the two of them had finally consummated their renewed love in the bed where they now lay. It hadn't been perfect, far from it. Danny's injured arm had hampered proceedings more than once, but that somehow made the whole experience all the more real. The paroxysms of laughter that had consumed them at one point had hardly been the stuff of a movie-based love scene for instance, but it hadn't mattered in the slightest. Sometimes sex didn't go according to plan, but if you could laugh off the awkward moments then you were more than halfway there in Lindsay's opinion.

Snuggling in closer, she kissed her sleeping husband awake and treated him to her wide, sunny smile as his eyes flickered open and met hers "Hey!" she greeted softly.

The slumberous look he gave her in return sent renewed shivers down her spine. "Stop that!" she admonished him.

"Stop what?" he asked innocently, and then laughed before pulling her close for a long, invigorating kiss.

"This isn't how I planned this," he told her when they eventually broke apart.

Lindsay nodded. It hadn't been how she'd imagined this happening either, but the spontaneity of it had stripped away all of the nervous expectation that had been building up between them over the past couple of weeks and for that she was grateful. "I know," she said, "But it felt right."

Danny was silent for a moment. "Yeah," he eventually agreed, "It did - but maybe it wasn't quite the best timing even so."

Lindsay frowned, somewhat disturbed by this pronouncement. "I don't understand," she said. "I thought this was what you wanted?"

"It was," Danny assured her, "I just think we ought to have talked things out a little more first that's all."

"But we did talk," Lindsay insisted. "We agreed we were ready for this. Are you saying you think it was a mistake? That it was too soon?" Her voice cracked as a surge of unwanted emotions welled up within her like a geyser getting ready to blow.

"No!" Danny exclaimed. "Jesus no! Don't get upset, that isn't what I meant."

"So what did you mean then?"

Lindsay sat up, her back rigid with tension. She drew the sheet around her naked form, suddenly uncomfortable with being so exposed in front of him.

"Lindsay…" Danny sat up too and closed his hand over hers where it clutched the sheet to her breast. "Don't shut yourself off from me," he chastised her, "And don't put words into my mouth before I've said them either. You promised you wouldn't do that anymore."

There followed a fraught moment while she continued to resist his touch before she eventually relented and allowed him to draw the offending material aside. "I'm sorry," she whispered, tears sparking on her cheeks. "I'm over-reacting, I know I am."

"It's all right," Danny reassured her.

He cupped her cheek in his hand and rested his forehead against hers. "I'm handling this badly," he said. "I didn't mean to imply that what just happened was anything less than what I wanted. Yes, it was completely spur of the moment, but I have no regrets, I promise you that. My head is just telling me that I probably should have found out what's been bothering you first that's all."

He felt her tense up again, but thankfully she didn't back away from it. "It's nothing, Danny. I…" She paused. "Well, obviously it's _something_, it's just… it doesn't matter one way or another. I thought it did but it doesn't."

She gazed at him earnestly, willing him to understand, but he looked back at her blankly. "Come again?" he asked in obvious confusion.

Lindsay let her unconsciously held breath go. "Well, I thought I explained it perfectly clearly," she remarked with a hint of a smile.

"Oh, yeah, yeah, it was as clear as crystal… mud," Danny quipped back before his expression turned serious once again. "Just tell me, okay?"

Lindsay nodded. "Okay," she agreed. She shifted a little self-consciously. "Can we get dressed first though?"

"Probably a good idea," Danny decided sagely. "I'm gonna keep losing the point of the conversation otherwise. The view is _very_ distracting from where I'm sitting right now."

"Danny!" Lindsay blushed and swatted him across the chest.

He caught her hand and brought it to his lips, delicately kissing the inside of her wrist. "So I like looking at my wife - what's wrong with that?"

"You make it sound like I'm some sort of… of… nymph or something."

"Sounds pretty close actually - you do remind me of a wood nymph with all that soft fragrant skin and those sweet, sexy curves." He bent to kiss her bare shoulder to emphasise his approval.

Lindsay closed her eyes as his clever mouth teased her goose-bumped flesh. How did he manage to do this to her, she wondered. He wasn't the most romantic of men, but every-so-often he came out with something like that and she was putty in his hands. It wasn't the pretty language so much as the honesty of the sentiment that really got to her. She'd had men who had bought her flowers on a regular basis, or flattered her with well-versed compliments, but Danny's slightly off-the-wall but breathtakingly sincere gestures beat them all hands down.

She sighed with quiet pleasure as his roaming mouth sought hers and he delicately parted her lips with his tongue. He lowered her back down to the mattress and she went with him willingly, pressing her body sinuously into his as their embrace became more heated.

"We… still… need… to… talk…," he told her between progressively more frenetic kisses.

"We will…" she assured him, arching her neck as his busy mouth found the hammering pulse-point in her throat. "Later…"

She felt him smile against her sensitised skin and the low chuckle that rumbled from the back of his throat swept like wildfire through her already fizzing nerve-endings. "I think I'm addicted to you, Mrs Messer," he told her as his mouth claimed hers for its own once again.

"And this is a bad thing?" she questioned breathlessly.

"Oh no," he murmured huskily as his fingers traced the contours of her face. "It's definitely a good thing. A very, very good thing in fact…"

**OOOOOO**

_**Some more time later…**_

"Can you remember the last time we spent the whole morning in bed?" Lindsay asked of her husband as she loaded shredded chicken, ham and mayonnaise onto thick door-steps of bread. She topped the filling with a generous handful of salad, added the second slice of bread and then used the heel of her hand to seal the sandwiches together before deftly cutting them into two with a large bread knife.

"Err… sometime never maybe," Danny replied as he poured two glasses of juice and tipped a pack of tortillas into a bowl for them to share. He grinned. "You gonna manage all that?" he enquired, nodding at the enormous sandwich that she'd constructed for herself.

"Of course." She smiled cheekily at him. "I worked up an appetite."

He laughed as he took the plate that she offered him and sat down at the small kitchen table nearby. "Then I guess you should have made me double then," he remarked.

Lindsay giggled. "We probably shouldn't have let ourselves get so distracted, should we?" she said.

"Babe, after what we've been through I think we're entitled," Danny assured her.

"I know but…" A crease of consternation appeared down the centre of forehead. "Don't you think we were kind of avoiding?"

Danny reached out and squeezed her hand. "Given that you're bringing it up now, and there was no way I was going to let it go, then I don't think we should get too hung up on the fact that we allowed ourselves to get temporarily distracted by some hot and heavy between-the-sheets action." He grinned mischievously at her. "I mean we have this massive dry spell to make up for after all."

Lindsay rolled her eyes. "And who said chivalry's dead?" she deadpanned.

Danny laughed. "I mean it though," he went on more seriously. "I need to know what's going on."

Lindsay nodded. "I know - I just think that maybe I made the whole thing into a bigger deal than it needed to be. It took me by surprise, you see, and…" She sighed before finally arriving at the point. "Rachel said something the other day that knocked my confidence in us a little."

Danny paused in the act of taking a bite of his sandwich. "Like what?" he asked with a concerned frown.

"It was while we were interrogating the witnesses in the Trebechi case – you know the day you got shot?"

Danny nodded.

"Karenna Melvin was reluctant to make an official statement," Lindsay explained, "But I was sure her boyfriend could persuade her to cooperate so I offered to change the baby while they talked things over. I don't know how the subject came up, but I mentioned about you being convinced that Lucy was a boy and remarked on the possibility of us getting to experience that next time around, and Rachel…"

She broke off, struggling to get the words out now that it had come to having them possibly confirmed. "Rachel implied that you'd told her that you didn't want anymore children," she said in a rush.

"I told you a while back that I thought it was too soon," Danny reminded her.

"I know, but I didn't think that meant it was completely off the agenda."

"It isn't."

"So Rachel was lying to me then?"

Danny sighed. "No, she wasn't lying. I did feel that way for a long time."

"So what? Now you've changed your mind?" Lindsay said disbelievingly. "It's either something you want or you don't, Danny. There is no middle ground."

"Trust me, it's not that black and white," he told her. "Do you have any idea what it's like being forced to walk away from your child? What that does to you?"

"You didn't walk away from her."

"Well, it sure as hell felt like it at the time," Danny remarked bitterly. "I know she adjusted to the situation eventually, but those first few weeks… she was clingy in the extreme, Lindsay. She would barely let me out of her sight when she was with me and she sobbed her heart out whenever it was time for her to come home to you."

Lindsay paled. "I never knew that."

"I know - I chose not to tell you. I know that was the wrong thing to do, but I was barely making it through the day at the time. I couldn't face seeing you any more than I had to. You were always so…" He shook his head. "You treated me like a stranger and I couldn't bear it." He sighed. "Lucy came to terms after a while. I think she was frightened that I'd leave her permanently. Once she realised that I wasn't going anywhere, that I'd always be there for her no matter what, she calmed down."

"I'm sorry…"

Danny dropped his gaze to the table. "Don't get me wrong, I love Lucy more than life itself, but the thought of bringing another child into this world and having everything go pear-shaped on me again?" He shook his head. "I didn't think it was worth the risk. I didn't want to end up being a part-time father to two children."

"As much as we might wish there was, there are no guarantees, Danny," Lindsay told him, "Even now after everything we've been through."

He nodded. "I know that, but I have my feelings in better perspective now. I suppose telling Rachel that I didn't want any more children was my way of holding her at arm's length. I was basically telling her that she wasn't going to find the family that she might want with me. It set a time limit on our relationship, made it finite."

He reached across the table and placed his hand over hers. "But it's different with you, it always has been. For a long time, I didn't have much faith in anything, but I have faith in us now. It's all a question of balance really. Back then, the cons far outweighed the pros. Now… now I think it _is _worth the risk."

"So another baby isn't beyond the realms of possibility then?" Lindsay asked him shyly.

"I think when the time is right, there's nothing that I'd want more," he assured her.

Her shoulders sagged in relief and Danny shot her a quizzical look. "What did you mean before?" he asked. "About it not mattering one way or the other?"

"Having another baby is this yearning in me that's difficult to describe," Lindsay explained, "But I realised that I didn't want just any baby, I wanted _our_ baby, and if you didn't want that too then…" She shrugged. "I would have given up that dream for you. It would have been hard, but I would have accepted it as the way that things had to be. Lucy is enough; another child would just be…"

"The frosting on an already delicious cake?" Danny suggested when she couldn't find the appropriate words to describe how she felt.

Lindsay smiled. "Exactly," she said before her expression sobered again. "You're still angry," she said. "About how our split affected your relationship with Lucy, I mean."

"Yes," he admitted frankly, "I think in some ways I always will be. But I'm not mad at you anymore; I just hate the situation we found ourselves in."

"If we'd talked more, it might have been avoidable," Lindsay said guiltily, knowing that she was more responsible than Danny for their lack of communication during that time. She'd closed herself off, shut down completely, and his increasingly desperate efforts to get through to her had all been in vain.

"And it might not have been either," her husband countered. "I think we needed that time apart to really appreciate what we had. We've each come back into this with a whole different perspective on things and I think that's partway responsible for where we are today. As much as we don't like to admit it, Lucy's imminent arrival did have some bearing on the choices we both made – the timing of them especially. We were forced into being a family before we were really ready for it as a couple. We kind of jumped from A to Z and missed a whole lot of letters in between and I don't think that helped the situation."

"But we're not exactly taking the traditional route now either, are we?" Lindsay pointed out.

"No," Danny agreed, "But we _are_ making properly considered decisions about every step we take and that's the most important thing, I think."

Lindsay nodded. "I guess I was kidding myself," she said, her tone sombre.

"About what?" he enquired.

"That all this had had no major impact on Lucy," she replied. "I was so sure she'd come through it pretty much unscathed." She sighed. "I couldn't have been more wrong, could I?"

"I think we did the best we could under difficult circumstances," Danny told her soothingly. "It's easy to look back now and see how we could have handled things better, but when you're in the middle of something like that, it's much harder to see the wood for the trees."

"And who's to say that us staying together and trying to work things out at the time would have been better for Lucy anyway, huh?" he went on. "I mean let's be honest here - neither of us was ready to face some of the issues behind our problems back then, were we? Maybe separating was the best thing for us in the long run. It allowed us the breathing space to consider what we truly wanted, and it gave Lucy the greatest chance of having two parents who were happy _and_ together."

"Timing is everything, huh?"

"For us more than most," Danny concurred. "We've often struggled to connect at the same time over the years, haven't we?"

"Do you think we should be worried about that?" Lindsay asked him.

He shook his head. "No, no, I don't think so. I don't know how to explain it, but it feels different this time around. Yes, there's still some tension between us, but our relationship is stronger than it's ever been. It feels more permanent now, as if nothing can break us ever again."

Lindsay dropped her gaze, wishing she had the same confidence in them that he clearly had. She was a lot closer to that surety than she'd ever been in the past but she couldn't claim absolute certainty yet.

"I know we're not on the same page in that respect," Danny said, picking up on her unease, "But I don't think that's anything to be worried about. You've had a lot more to resolve inside yourself than me so it's bound to take you a little longer to get there."

He reached across the table and threaded his fingers through hers. "I can wait," he assured her.

Her eyes filled with prickly tears. "Thank you," she whispered.

"You're welcome, sweetheart," he responded warmly and then smiled. "Now come here and kiss me because I think I'm getting withdrawal symptoms."

Lindsay laughed in spite of herself. "My heart bleeds," she said with playful sarcasm.

"We've still got the rest of the day to make the most of, remember?"

"And this is your idea of doing that, huh?" Lindsay said as she slid into his lap and looped her arms around his neck.

Danny planted a swift, hard kiss on her upturned lips. "Tomorrow I'll be more creative," he promised her faithfully.

"And today?"

"Well, today…" He paused as if weighing things up. "Today I have a one-track mind so you're just gonna have to deal," he finished with a salacious twinkle in his eyes.

"Oh, is that so?" she enquired as his lips hovered expectantly over hers.

"Oh, that's definitely so," he confirmed before his mouth finally descended and proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt…

_**To be continued…**_


	40. What Makes the World Go Round

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary:**The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi! A little Christmas present for you all :-) Hope you enjoy.

More Author's Notes at the end, but for now, on with the show…

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 40 – What Makes the World Go Round**_

Leaning with one shoulder propped up against the doorframe, Danny stood unnoticed in the kitchen doorway, silently observing the bustle of feminine activity that was taking place within. It was the weekend before Thanksgiving and his wife and daughter were hosting a very special dinner party in a few hours time. As the guest list had expanded somewhat since the initial arrangements were made a couple of weeks before, Stella was also pitching in to ensure that everything ran like clockwork in the run-up to the big event.

He himself was banned from the kitchen – on his daughter's peremptory diktat. He'd made a vain attempt to persuade her that perhaps this wasn't the most politically correct of circumstances, but Lucy was oblivious to such adult concerns. 'Daddy' along with 'Uncle Bert' were the guests of honour and that meant he wasn't to lift a finger. As he was quite sure that this would still be the case if Lindsay and Stella had been the beneficiaries instead of him and his old friend, he had acquiesced to his little girl's orders without any further objection.

His eyes sought out Lindsay then. His wife was standing at the counter energetically stirring some kind of concoction in a large mixing bowl, and he couldn't help but smile as she absently blew a stray strand of hair out of her eyes as she worked. She had scrapped her honey-brown locks up into a messy ponytail atop her head, but wisps were escaping here, there and everywhere, coiling chaotically about her face and neck. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat of the kitchen and she was starting to look a little frazzled. Sensing that he would be in trouble if she clocked onto his idle presence in the doorway, he wisely decided to retreat but unfortunately wasn't quite quick enough to avoid being caught.

Well busted, he thought resignedly as her harassed gaze met his and her eyes narrowed in irritation. Tilting his palms skyward, he shrugged his shoulders apologetically and the complaint in her eyes softened a little in response. With a covert glance in Lucy's direction, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder to indicate that she should follow him into the other room.

"What do you want?" she demanded of him impatiently when she joined him a few moments later. "There's still loads left to do and everyone will be arriving soon so…"

"Don't say I never do anything for you," he said, interrupting her invective mid-flow for maximum effect.

It took her a moment to realise what he was talking about, but then her eyes widened as she spotted his clandestine handiwork. The table that she'd polished earlier that morning was now magically set for the upcoming occasion. It was a vision of homely sophistication with shiny cutlery, fluted champagne glasses and spiralled silver candles. The garish conical party hats that Lucy had insisted upon marked out each guest's place at the long, oblong table set for ten.

"She'll skin you alive," she remarked with a laugh.

"Well I won't tell if you don't," he responded with a conspiratorial grin, as he hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her in close.

Her arms automatically rose to circle his neck as his mouth settled possessively over hers. "Are you staying again tonight?" she asked him when their kiss eventually drew to a close.

"Why? Two nights in a row too much for you to handle?" Danny enquired with a cheeky wink.

Ignoring the show of male ego, Lindsay shook her head. "No, I just…"

"You're still not comfortable with us being together when Stella's around are you?" he guessed, his tone more serious now.

It had been just over two weeks since they'd reignited their stalled sex life and the fact that she was decidedly reluctant to indulge in such activity when Stella was at home had not passed Danny by. He'd moved back into his own apartment a week and a half ago but, apart from last night, she'd stayed over at his place on the nights that they'd spent together since then. As that usually coincided with the times that he had custody of Lucy, their love life was already in danger of settling into a predictable routine, which wasn't a road he wanted to travel down for too much longer in case it ended up becoming a permanent habit.

"It's just that we can sometimes be kind of noisy," Lindsay said, her cheeks reddening a little in embarrassment.

"You can you mean," Danny countered with a laugh.

Lindsay's blush deepened. Sex with Danny had always been good, but there seemed to be an extra dimension to their lovemaking now. Maybe because she'd let him see into the darkest areas of her soul over the past few months, laid herself bare before him like she had with no other man she'd ever met. She no longer felt the need to erect a barrier of emotional protection between the two of them anymore and was gradually letting her inhibitions go as a result. However, while this was doing wonders for her shaky self-esteem, in the dark recesses of her mind the fear of rejection still remained. It just wasn't possible for her to get over her emotional problems that quickly, the scars ran too deep for that. Things were steadily improving day-by-day though, and for that, at least, she was grateful.

"That's kind of beside the point, Danny," she rejoined with a faint pout.

He chuckled. "You worry about things like that too much," he told her, playfully running the tip of his finger over her protruding bottom lip.

Leaning forward, he affectionately kissed her brow and then rested his forehead against hers. "I'm gonna miss you," he murmured as he stroked his fingers through her hair.

Lindsay sighed as she slid her arms around his waist. "I'm gonna miss you too," she replied, tilting her head back so that she could look up into his face. "I wish I didn't have to go, but I feel like I owe it to my family. I wasn't in the best emotional state the last time I saw them and I know they've been worried about me. Seeing me face-to-face will hopefully reassure them that I'm doing much better now."

"I'm not questioning your reasoning, babe," Danny assured her. "If we each spend Thanksgiving with our respective folks then we get to spend Christmas alone. It's the obvious compromise even if I would prefer not be apart from you right now."

"Are you sure your Mom and Dad don't mind not seeing Lucy?" Lindsay asked him.

"Don't worry, they're fine with it," Danny told her. "They understand why we want Christmas to be just the three of us."

"I know, but we usually alternate Thanksgiving and Christmas between your family and mine so they're missing out this year, aren't they?"

Danny shrugged. "They get to see her at New Year so they've not got too long to wait," he pointed out.

"New Year?" Lindsay queried with a puzzled frown.

"I have them scheduled in to baby-sit," he explained.

"You do? Since when?"

"Since two days ago," Danny said, and then threw her a questioning look. "Didn't I tell you?" he enquired.

Lindsay shook her head. "No, no you didn't - and I'm working New Year's Eve, remember? Between visiting my family a few months ago and flying out to Montana again next week too, I'm pretty short on leave days."

"But your shift ends at ten, right?"

Lindsay nodded. "Yes."

"So you'll get changed at the Lab and I'll pick you up from there," he reasoned. "I know it'll only be for a few hours, but we'll get to see the New Year in together and that's all that matters."

"I'm not sure I'll be up for Times Square after a twelve hour shift, Danny."

"You never know you might be on your second wind by then, and if you aren't then we'll just go home, snuggle up on the sofa and watch it all on TV."

Lindsay laughed. "You have an answer for everything, don't you?"

He grinned at her. "It's a skill of mine."

She rolled her eyes. "An annoying character trait more like," she remarked sardonically, and then giggled when he poked her in the ribs in retaliation.

"Only kidding," she said, reaching out to grasp the front of his shirt in her hands. Standing on her tip-toes, she pressed her mouth to his again.

"Don't think you can get around me that way," he murmured against her lips before belying those words by deepening their embrace until it morphed from a relatively chaste kiss into a full-on make-out session.

"Mommy? Where you go?" Lucy's little voice sounded in the distance. There was a patter of small feet and then… "Oh no! Are you an' Daddy kissing _again_?" she exclaimed in exasperation.

Both Danny and Lindsay sniggered at their daughter's overly dramatic tone. You could almost hear the inevitable eye-roll in it.

"I thought she was four not fourteen," Danny commented in Lindsay's ear as they broke off their embrace and turned to face their child.

She smiled at him. "She's just not used to seeing us acting like honeymooners all the time," she said. "I mean let's face it - we _are _kind ofbasking in the glow, aren't we?"

He shrugged. "So?" he responded before turning to address their daughter. "Mommy was just setting the table, pumpkin," he lied smoothly. "And Daddy decided that she deserved a kiss because it looks so beautiful," he added for good measure.

His tactics worked a treat. "Oh wow! It's so pretty!" Lucy exclaimed, her palms pressed reverently together as she gazed in wonder at the decorated table. She flung her arms around her mother's legs, clutching tight. "Fank you, Mommy, Fank you. I love it!"

"You're welcome, sweetie," Lindsay said, affectionately ruffling the little girl's hair even as she tilted her head back to kiss her husband in recognition of his magnanimous relinquishing of all the credit.

Although given Lucy's probable reaction if she knew the truth, maybe the gesture wasn't quite as noble as it first appeared. Still, the table _did_ look pretty, and credit where credit was due and all that...

"You owe me," Danny told her when their lips parted.

She gazed up at him, a promise evident in her warm brown eyes. "I'll pay you later," she said, as she disentangled herself from his arms and took Lucy's hand in hers.

"I intend to collect," he called out after her, as the two of them headed back towards the kitchen.

She smiled over her shoulder at him. "I'm counting on it," she assured him, before she finally disappeared from view.

Danny grinned inwardly to himself. '_Well,_' he thought in satisfaction. '_You're on a promise tonight, Messer, make no mistake…_'

**OOOOOO**

_**Several hours later…**_

"Wow! Are we feeding the five thousand?" Danny remarked when he came into the kitchen to find his wife unloading various delicious-looking desserts from the refrigerator.

"You think it's too much?" Lindsay asked, surveying the array of food on the counter with a critical eye.

"I think that even if it is, the leftovers won't go to waste," he reassured her.

Lindsay nodded. "Can you tell everyone to come through and choose what they want?" she asked. "I could bring it all into the other room, but it's probably easier to just serve it from here."

Danny obediently went back into the living room to make this announcement, but returned to the kitchen forthwith. "Lucy's not going to like it," she warned him as he stationed himself beside her at the counter.

"Trust me," he told her dryly, "She's way too busy being the centre of attention to notice my flagrant disregard of the rules."

Lindsay laughed. "She's not turning obnoxious is she?" she asked.

Danny shook his head. "Nah, she's keeping it within the realms of cute at the moment so I think we're safe..."

"Well, I might have known you'd be the first in line," he remarked as Flack moseyed into the room in search of sustenance.

"It's a deliberate strategy," his friend told him with aplomb. "This way I get the first choice of seconds."

Lindsay laughed and he grinned at her before rubbing his hands together in anticipation. "So what have we got on offer here, gorgeous?" he asked.

"Hey!" Danny cut in warningly.

"What?" Don eyed him innocently.

"Stop flattering my wife."

"Why? Doesn't she deserve it?"

"Got him there," he remarked to Lindsay when this was greeted with open-mouthed astonishment by his normally quick-witted colleague.

She smiled at him. "You like to live dangerously, don't you?" she said.

Flack shrugged. "It gets the adrenaline going and you _are_ looking particularly fetching today, I must say," he finished extravagantly.

Lindsay blushed prettily. "Thank-you," she said, ducking her gaze shyly and Danny reined in his instinct to slap his friend upside the head. Not that he would ever encourage such behaviour normally, but maybe Don's comment wasn't such a bad thing. If other men told Lindsay she was beautiful as well as him then maybe she'd really start to believe it.

Of course those 'other men' were only acceptable from a select few – Flack was okay for instance - for all his teasing, he would never encroach on his best friend's girl. And Mac – out of working hours, he treated Lindsay more like a daughter than anything else. Then there was the Doc, Sid, Adam and Bert – all trustworthy individuals around his wife in Danny's mind. After that though, his tolerance quickly ran out.

He took the opportunity to study Lindsay as she described each of the plated desserts for Flack so that he could make his final selection. She was dressed fairly simply in an emerald-green skirt with a wide band of embroidered detail around the hem. This she'd teamed with fitted black top that clung flatteringly to her upper body without being too revealing. A large jet-black pearl drop necklace nestled in the delicate swell of her cleavage, and she'd curled her hair in artful waves about her face.

He smiled at the hopeful picture she presented. She wasn't back to full health yet, but everything was moving in the right direction in that respect. Doctor Quinn had reduced her antidepressant dosage on a check-up visit the previous week, while Simone – without breaking patient confidentiality – had assured him that the personal therapy sessions were also going well. He didn't need them to tell him that Lindsay was getting better though; he could see it with his own eyes. The weight she'd put back on over the past few months had taken away the permanently drawn look from her face. Her cheeks now bloomed with rosy health, while her eyes sparkled with renewed vitality. He had a hell of lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, he reckoned.

Adam wandered into the kitchen next, his new girlfriend Sarah in tow. Rather incongruously, Adam was the only one of their guests to bring a date with him. Mac and Hawkes had each arrived alone, while Sid had been unable to attend due to a prior commitment. Bert's wife had passed six years ago, Stella was sticking to her 'no men at my apartment' rule, and Flack had chosen not to bring Ellen with him either.

"She'd only make things difficult," Don had replied evasively when Danny had asked him why.

From that, Danny had presumed that Ellen, struggling with her conflicting loyalties, had declined the invite. It bothered him that his life choices were having a detrimental impact on his friend's relationship, but he knew that he had to make the decisions that were right for his family in spite of that.

"Well, if it isn't the Stud-Man," he teased his far too gullible colleague, and then winked at the strawberry-blonde Lab Tech by his side. "Hey Sarah!"

"Male bravado," Lindsay remarked dryly to her younger female colleague. "It's the curse of womankind."

Sarah smiled briefly at the wry comment. "This all looks delicious, Lindsay. You must have worked like a Trojan to get it all done in time."

"I had help," Lindsay returned modestly.

Danny laughed. "I would say Luce is more of a hindrance, babe," he commented with a smile.

"I meant Stella actually."

"Don't listen to her," Stella's voice came from the doorway. "I may have been a willing kitchen-hand, but she organised the whole thing."

"With military precision," Danny joked, recalling the mountain of lists his wife had written to keep everything under control.

"Don't knock it when you're reaping the benefits," Stella advised him as he cut a slice of chocolate cheesecake for Adam, while Lindsay sorted out some Banana Cream Pie for Sarah.

"Is Lucy behaving herself?" Lindsay enquired of her friend.

Stella smiled. "She's holding court with Mac and Bert," she said. "For two such strong vital men, they sure are a couple of teddy-bears around that little girl."

"I'm afraid we've overwhelmed Bert a little," Lindsay said. "This was originally meant to be a small intimate dinner and it kind of exploded into a Crime Lab pre-Thanksgiving fiesta."

Stella grinned. "He seems to be holding his own. He's very supportive of you and Danny, you know. He told me he couldn't have asked for a better reason to be thankful this Thursday than seeing the two of you happy again."

"Lucy's not the only one he's a teddy-bear around," Danny said on overhearing this. "He adores Lindsay. 'There's just something special about her, Danny,'" he said, mimicking his friend's broad Brooklyn accent that was a different flavour on his own Staten Island tones. "'I feel it in my gut and my gut's never been wrong.'"

"He knows quality when he sees it, that's all," Lindsay said breezily. "And let's face it; I had to be a step up on some of the others, didn't I?"

She grinned at him brazenly and he laughed, delighted that she felt comfortable and confident enough to voice such an opinion. "You sure are, baby," he declared, dramatically dipping her over his arm and planting a noisy kiss on her lips.

"Danny!" she protested, aware of their audience. "Cut it out!"

Her attention focused on her husband, she failed to see the celebratory high-five that Stella and Adam exchanged at this overt and slightly uncharacteristic PDA from the two of them. Their friends were behind them all the way and nothing made them happier than to witness the evidence of their strengthening relationship with their very own eyes.

"Can I sneak a slice while no-one's looking?" Danny said to Lindsay when they were alone again. He nodded at the Key Lime Pie on the counter in front of him. "I wouldn't want to miss out."

Lindsay's eyes inexplicably filled at that.

"Hey!" he said gently, "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," Lindsay assured him, sniffing back the tears. "You just… you told Flack my Key Lime Pie was the best ever."

"Well yeah," Danny said, not sure why that warranted the waterworks. "That's cus it is."

"I mean you told him last year when we were apart and you were with Rachel," she explained.

Danny cocked his head to one side. "How do you know that?" he asked curiously.

"Lucy told me. A few weeks ago now, but I really wish she'd told me at the time. Back then I thought that you hated me. I thought that you probably avoided all mention of my name unless you were forced into it."

Danny sighed. "Linds, I was extremely angry with you, but it was never as bad as that. You were always in my thoughts, despite me doing my best to keep you out of them. And at times like… Don's birthday, right?" He looked at her for confirmation and she nodded. "At time's like that, when something that reminded me of you just popped into my head…" He shook his head. "Well, why wouldn't I voice it?"

"Complimenting your ex is not really the done thing, Dan."

"In front of a new girlfriend maybe," he concurred, "But if it's in front of a mutual friend who loves you too, then why not?" He smiled. "I only said you made the best Key Lime Pie I ever tasted, it's not like I told him you have the cutest butt of any woman I'd ever met."

"Which you do by the way," he went on. "Just in case you were wondering, but that's not really the point here, is it?"

"According to Lucy, you refused the dessert in the restaurant because it wasn't made by me," Lindsay said.

Danny shrugged. "I think it was more because it made me sad to think of how bad things had gotten between us. I remember you making it for me during the Rutherford case," he said, referring to a particularly harrowing child abuse case that had been assigned to him when Lucy was around a year old.

He'd always found that kind of thing difficult – I mean who wouldn't? However, he had quickly discovered that it was a whole different ball-game now that he was a father himself. He could personally connect with the kind of torture that the poor parents must have gone through and that somehow made the whole thing ten times worse. The case had been a definite strain on him and he knew that Lindsay had felt ineffectual as she tried to support him through it.

Making his favourite dessert, massaging his tense shoulders for him, dragging him out to a ball-game when he'd been tempted to sit at home and wallow had seemed like such small gestures on her part, but, to him, they had meant a great deal. He had someone to return home to at night and that was the ultimate gift. He could close the door on the darkness of the world and immerse himself in the light and hope of his family.

Whether Lindsay knew it or not, that was what had got him through that case. And on Don's birthday last year - when a small incident had brought home to him exactly what he'd lost - it had been too painful for him to choose his favourite dessert off the menu simply because it reminded him so much of his estranged wife.

It was a small gesture of continued solidarity at a time when it had all seemed beyond repair. Given the expression on Lindsay's face, it clearly meant a lot to her. "You're weird," he said as he instinctively drew her into his arms again.

"You mean getting all teary-eyed because you refused a dessert in a restaurant?" she said with a giggle. "It's silly, I know, but don't you see? It meant that you still… that you still…"

"Loved you?" Danny supplied when her emotions caused her to falter.

"I was going to say 'still cared about me'," she answered, cupping the side of his neck in her hands, "But I think I'll take the love if you don't mind."

"Me?" Danny said. "I don't mind at all. Take all the love you want."

He dipped his head to kiss her upturned lips, and, for the next thirty seconds or so, they were oblivious to everything but each other. They were finally forced apart when someone loudly cleared their throat behind them.

"Mommy and Daddy are _always_ kissing lately," Lucy wearily told her two companions as her parents reluctantly broke off their embrace.

Bert chuckled. "Don't knock it, baby girl. It that which makes the world go round, you know."

"Is that true, Uncle Mac?" Lucy gazed up at her godfather, the fountain of all knowledge as far as she was concerned. He was in charge of the Lab where Mommy and Daddy worked so he had to be the cleverest. "Does kissing really make the world go round?"

Mac smiled down into her small cherubim face. "No sweetie, but love sure does," he said, for once leading with a spiritual explanation rather than a scientific one. "And I think your Mommy and Daddy love each other – and you - very much."

"So does that means you'll want to be properly married again soon?" Lucy asked her parents eagerly.

Danny felt Lindsay tense by his side, but he decided a straightforward, if slightly untruthful answer was the best one under the circumstances. He knew where they were headed now, but he also knew that they had to get there in their own time. If they let Lucy think such a reunion was imminent then she would expect it to happen tomorrow. Their daughter's definition of 'soon' was vastly different to theirs and that had to be taken into account here.

"Not just yet, sweetie," he gently informed her. "If we decide we do, you'll be the first to know, I promise."

Lucy gazed at him solemn-eyed for a moment, but eventually accepted this explanation. "I helped make that one," she said, pointing to the glass bowl filled with layered chocolate and raspberry mousse and broken-up pieces of chocolate brownie, all topped with swirls of cream and a brightly-coloured scattering of M&Ms.

Bert kindly obliged and chose accordingly while Mac willingly followed suit. "Can I have two spoons, Mommy?" Lucy enquired when it came to her turn to be served.

"I think one spoon is enough for now," Lindsay told her daughter with calm authority. "There's going to be dancing later and you don't want to end up with a poorly tummy because you ate too much, do you?"

Sensing that arguing was only going to lead to her missing out on all the fun, Lucy accepted this with equanimity. "Can you dance Uncle Bert?" she asked the sprightly pensioner by her side.

He reached down and ruffled her hair. "I sure can, honey. I was a real twinkle-toes in my day. Me and my Molly met at a dance – a real dance, mind, not this hip-hop stuff that all the young 'uns are interested in nowadays."

Danny laughed. "Hip-hop's not what you've got to worry about, buddy. My wife's turned this one into a country music fiend. You need to brush up on your line-dancing."

"Daddy always scrunches up his nose when we make him join in," Lucy informed them.

Mac laughed. "You line-dance?" he asked incredulously.

"Only under extreme duress, believe me," Danny replied with an exaggerated shudder.

"Well, there's nothing better than a good old-fashioned waltz if you ask me," Bert said. "It always impresses the ladies in my experience."

"There's definitely something romantic about that kind of dancing, that's for sure," Lindsay agreed.

"Does it get you invited in for coffee?" Danny quipped with a grin and received an elbow in the ribs from his wife for his pleasure.

"Success rate is second to none," Bert responded with a sly wink.

Danny laughed. "I think you were quite the Casanova in your day, huh, Bert?"

"Until I met the right woman, yes," his friend replied, "And then I never looked back. You know what that's like, I imagine," he finished with a sidelong glance at Lindsay.

"She has rather ruined my mojo, yeah," Danny teased, throwing an affectionate arm around her shoulders and leaning in to press a soft kiss to her temple.

"And with the amazing ability to deliver such flattering compliments as that, it's no wonder I married him, huh?" Lindsay rejoined.

Bert smiled. "It does seem that he needs a little instruction on how it's done," he agreed. With a formal little bow, he held out his hand across the counter to her. "May I have the pleasure of a dance later, my lady?" he asked her formally.

Charmed, Lindsay slipped her hand into his and smiled as he bent to lightly kiss the backs of her fingers. "It would be my pleasure," she assured him warmly.

"Are you taking notes?" Bert asked Danny as he straightened up and stepped back.

"That you're hitting on my wife?" he responded. "Oh yeah, I'm noticing."

"Danny!" Lindsay admonished, but Bert just laughed while her husband grinned at her unrepentantly.

"I finished Mommy," Lucy cut in then, holding out her empty bowl like Oliver Twist asking for more.

"Already?" Lindsay exclaimed, looking down at her daughter who had a rim of chocolate around her mouth having just devoured her dessert in record time. "Look at you," she tutted. "Come here and let me wash your hands and face before you get chocolate all over that dress."

As his wife went into 'Mommy' mode as he termed it, Danny shot a complaining look at Bert. "You're stealing my thunder," he claimed.

Bert glanced over at Mac. "Is he this slow at work?" he enquired long-sufferingly.

Mac chuckled. "Test tubes and Bunsen burners are a little different to matters of the heart," he said. "I'm sure he'll work it out eventually."

"Work _what _out eventually?" Danny demanded irritably.

Bert rolled his eyes. "Do I really have to spell it out?" he enquired.

"Mac?" Danny looked appealingly at his boss who took thankfully decided to take pity on him.

"You're supposed to cut in," he explained.

"It's how I won over my Molly," Bert said. "Although her date at the time wasn't the sharpest pencil in the box so I was always going to be an improvement." He grinned at his friend. "Your task is going to be a little harder, I think."

"Bite me, old man," Danny shot back combatively. "She's gonna be swept off her feet and then some."

"We'll see, young friend, we'll see…"

**OOOOOO**

_**Some time later…**_

"You weren't kidding earlier, were you?" Lindsay said to Bert as he led her in a slow, measured waltz. "How many dancing trophies have you got stashed away at home, huh?"

Bert laughed. "I had an ulterior motive for learning," he admitted rather shamefacedly.

"Got you the girls, did it?" she remarked with a laugh.

Bert shrugged. "Everyone was young once," he said. "And you've got some pretty slick moves yourself, my girl," he added, noting that her steps were perfectly in time with his.

"Mel made us all learn for her wedding," Lindsay said. "She wanted a big, formal dance at the reception. My brothers complained loudly and bitterly about the whole thing, but when Mel wants something, Mel gets. Period."

Bert nodded. "You don't feel you missed out?" he asked her.

"On what?"

"That kind of wedding?"

"Oh." Lindsay shook her head. "No. Maybe my wedding wasn't quite what I imagined it would be, but if we'd done it in the traditional way, I would have always wanted to keep it small and intimate. Big and flashy is Mel's thing not mine."

She smiled as Danny drew near. He'd been dancing with their daughter, but the difference in height had proved a challenge until he'd finally just picked her up and waltzed around the room with her in his arms instead.

"I think I'm losing my touch," he joked to them. "I used to have a better effect on the ladies." He turned to show them Lucy fast asleep on his shoulder. "One minute she was chattering away, the next she was completely zonked out."

Lindsay laughed and reached out to smooth her daughter's hair away from her face. "She's exhausted. It's an hour and a half past her bedtime and she's had a full day."

"I'll go put her down," Danny said.

"I'll help you," Lindsay offered. She turned to Bert. "You don't mind?" she asked.

He shook his head. "No, no, go ahead."

"I don't think this is what Bert meant by cutting in," Danny remarked as they walked side-by-side down the hallway to Lucy's bedroom.

"Huh?" Lindsay looked at him, confused.

He shook his head with a smile. "Never mind."

Working like a well-oiled machine, they quickly got their sleepy daughter ready for bed and tucked her in before taking it in turns to kiss her goodnight. She barely stirred throughout the whole process, but did drowsily lift her eyelids when Lindsay leaned over to gently kiss her forehead.

"Our dinner party was good, wasn't it, Mommy?" she said, slurring a little.

"Well, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves so that's definitely a good sign," her mother concurred.

"Did you like it, Daddy?" Lucy asked as he switched places with Lindsay and leaned down to kiss her puckered-up lips.

"It was the best dinner party I've ever been to," he assured her extravagantly.

Lucy smiled happily at him and then let her eyes drop. Moments later, her breathing settled into the steady rhythm of sleep and her parents quietly rose to leave.

"Linds wait…" Danny called out softly as she headed back down the corridor towards the living room.

She stopped and turned to face him, halted by the quiet entreaty in his voice. The distant sounds of conversation, laughter and music were a sharp contrast to the hushed stillness of the dimly-lit hallway and she was suddenly aware that they were alone in a way that they hadn't been since they'd woken up that morning.

As he closed the gap between them, she found herself holding her breath until he slid an arm around her waist and brought her body flush with his. "Dance with me," he urged her.

"What - here?" she asked in a hushed tone.

"Here," he confirmed with a nod as he curled his fingers around hers.

They needed no words as they moved fluidly together in the quiet dark, keeping in time with the faint sounds of music coming from the living room beyond. Even though their friends were only a few short metres away, their intimacy was absolute, their privacy seemingly protected from all intrusion.

"You sure know how to sweep a girl off her feet," Lindsay claimed when their lips inevitably found each other.

She felt Danny smile into their kiss, and she pulled away slightly. "What's so funny?" she asked him.

He shook his head with a chuckle. "Nothing," he said. "It's just that's exactly what I told Bert I'd do when he inferred I was lacking in romance."

She lifted her eyebrows quizzically. "So this is just to get one-up on your buddy, is it?" she asked.

"No, this is love," he assured her as his mouth sought hers once again. "Just love…"

_**To be continued…**_

**A/N2:** _It was probably a far too ambitious undertaking, but I was hoping to post this and the next couple of chapters around the actual time of year that they're set. As is apparent from the above though, my timing is a little off. _

_Hope you're looking forward to a D/L/L Christmas in the New Year therefore. LOL!_

_Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas - and also a Happy New Year if I don't post again before then - CharmedBec x_


	41. All I Want For Christmas

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi! Happy New Year everyone! I had some time off work over the holidays so I've been able to complete this update in double-quick time. I wanted to post this as near to Christmas as possible so I've worked extra hard to finish it.

I'll warn you now though – it's an unashamedly fluffy instalment, but that's because it's Christmas in 'Hold Me Now' land! Hope you enjoy!

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 41 – All I Want For Christmas**_

_**Christmas Eve…**_

"You're cutting it a little fine, aren't you?" Lindsay murmured to Danny as he slid surreptitiously into the empty seat beside her.

"Two DBs in one shift, plus the New York subway at Christmas? Not a good combination, believe me," he replied, leaning in close to speak directly in her ear. He glanced about the packed auditorium. "So, what did I miss?"

"Nothing yet – apparently Joseph is suffering a little stage-fright."

Danny chuckled. "Well, I guess I have him to thank for the fact that I haven't committed the ultimate crime of missing my daughter's close-up then," he said.

"Did you bring the camera?" Lindsay asked him.

"Right here," he said, withdrawing the small hand-held digital video recorder from his inside pocket. "I've got this too," he told her, pulling out the sprig of mistletoe that a drunken party-goer had foisted upon him on the subway. "Apparently, I'm lacking in festive cheer because I'm not dressed like a psychedelic Christmas tree."

Lindsay smiled. "Let me guess – the New York subway at Christmas?"

He grinned back at her. "Got it in one," he said. "Still…" He held the mistletoe up above their heads. "Shame to waste it," he finished and then leaned in to peck her on the lips before she could stop him.

"Danny!" she protested with a faint blush. "Everybody's looking!"

He shrugged, unconcerned by her appeal for public reserve. "So let 'em," he declared mulishly. "It's Christmas, isn't it? The season of goodwill to all men? That means I get to kiss my girl whenever and wherever I want."

The lights flickered and dimmed then, announcing the imminent opening of the show. Reaching out with one hand, he laced his fingers through hers as they both turned their attention to the front of the auditorium where the Christmas pageant they'd come to see was finally beginning to play out.

**OOOOOO**

_**A few hours later…**_

"Do you think I was a good Angel, Daddy?" Lucy asked as she scampered up the steps beside him, her little gloved hand held tightly within his much larger one.

She was still dressed in her pageant costume, although her tinsel halo now sat rather lop-sided on her head. At her mother's insistence, she had donned her thick winter coat over her snowy-white Angel dress, but had mutinously unbuttoned it on the car ride home. Given that the three of them had spent the previous Christmas apart, Lindsay had decided to let this infraction slide, not wanting to spoil the festive mood only a few short hours into the holiday.

"Well, you were certainly the most tuneful one," Danny remarked with a chuckle, as he pushed open the heavy door and ushered his wife and daughter into the apartment block ahead of him.

Lindsay smiled on hearing this. It had been Lucy's first school pageant and her enthusiastic singing had been a joy for them to behold. Their young daughter's big blue eyes had shone with childish passion as she'd raised her face to the heavens and sung her little heart out. She had undoubtedly been the loudest member of her pre-school choir, but at least she could carry a tune. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for some of her fellow classmates. The harmonies had left a lot to be desired, but Lindsay didn't think she'd witnessed anything cuter in her entire life.

"I think my costume was the prettiest," Lucy declared, making her mother instantly glad for all the late-night effort that she'd put in.

"Yeah, your Mommy did good," Danny agreed, smiling over at his wife as he punched the button for the elevator.

"Does Santa know me and Mommy are staying with you tonight?" Lucy asked him as she skipped into the elevator ahead of them.

"I think Mommy wrote him," Danny said, his tone solemn even as his eyes twinkled with suppressed mirth.

"I did," Lindsay confirmed with an equally sober nod. "And Stella promised she'd leave out a note to remind him as well."

"Did you 'member to get Rudolph some carrots too?" their little girl checked as the metallic doors swished closed behind them.

"Reindeers like carrots?" Danny asked, his eyes widening comically. "I thought they'd just share Santa's eggnog and cookies."

Lucy giggled. "No Daddy. Reindeers have carrots and water!"

Lindsay rolled her eyes when Danny continued to look blank. "Daddy's just teasing you, honey. He knows what Reindeers eat."

Danny's brow creased in complaint. "Mommy spoils all my fun," he told his daughter in an exaggeratedly sulky tone.

"Only when you're not funny," Lindsay immediately shot back, making Lucy dissolve into childish giggles again.

"Well," Danny declared with a defiant toss of his head, "Seeing as you're both so determined to gang up on me, I'm not sure you deserve my special surprise anymore."

"You made us a surprise?" Lucy squealed excitedly, clapping her hands together in enthusiasm. "Really, truly?"

"Really, truly," he assured her, "But you've gotta give me some sugar before I let you have it."

Lucy's response to this was exactly what he was counting on. Bouncing on the balls of her feet, she lifted her arms to be picked up so that she could grant his request for a kiss.

"Mommy's turn," he announced after his daughter had obligingly planted a huge smacker on his puckered-up lips.

Lindsay wrinkled her nose in mock distaste. "Do I have to?" she lamented.

"No surprise if you don't," he threatened.

"Mommy!" Lucy exclaimed frantically, her tone desperate, and Lindsay laughed.

"Relax sweetie," she told her daughter with a smile. "I was only kidding."

Reaching up with one hand, she cupped the side of her husband's face in her palm and then rose on her tiptoes to press her mouth firmly to his. "Satisfied?" she enquired when their lips parted with a slight pop.

"For now," Danny replied, shooting her an irreverent grin. "But I'm pretty sure I'm gonna need another fix later," he added with a sly wink as the elevator reached its destination and they stepped out into the corridor beyond.

"So girls," he said, setting Lucy back down on her feet and holding out a hand to each of the two women in his life. "Are you ready for your surprise?"

"Is the Pope catholic?" Lindsay remarked dryly as Lucy squealed an overeager "Yes!"

"Right then, you have to shut your eyes before we go in," Danny instructed as they approached his apartment door. "And no peeking until I say so, okay?"

Lucy nodded as she obediently covered her tightly closed eyes with her hands. "I won't Daddy, I promise," she vowed earnestly.

Retrieving his key from his jacket pocket, Danny unlocked and pushed open the door, and then guided his temporarily blind wife and daughter inside. "Keep those eyes closed," he warned as he shut the door behind them and grabbed the torch that he'd left waiting on the table just inside the doorway.

Using the narrow beam of light to illuminate his way, he moved to where he needed to be and then shut off the torch, plunging the apartment into darkness once more. "Okay, you can open your eyes now," he announced.

"It's all dark, Daddy, I can't see anything," Lucy immediately complained.

"All you need to do is count to three," he told her.

"Mommy too?" she enquired.

"Mommy too," he confirmed. "Okay so here we go then… One… Two… Three!"

There was a faint click, and then the room exploded into a dazzling array of colour. A spectacularly festooned tree stood twinkling in one corner, while additional fairy lights were strung around the window-frames and walls. Silver and gold stars, giant coloured baubles, and glittery white snowflakes hung on threads from the ceiling, catching the light as they rotated slowly on their strings.

Lucy's eyes were out on stalks as she gazed in wonder at the transformed apartment. "You made a Winter Wonderland," she said reverently.

"So you like?" Danny asked, as he slid an arm around Lindsay's shoulders and pulled her tightly against his side.

"When did you find time to do all this?" she marvelled. She'd stayed over with him two nights before and all he'd had then was another - much smaller – tree. It had been beautiful in its own way of course, but was nothing compared to the magnificent tree that accented the room now.

"Last night," he told her, "And I had help – Flack and Doc pitched in."

"You told me you were going out for a Christmas drink with the boys at Sullivan's," she accused.

He shrugged. "I lied – sorta. Beer and eggnog were definitely consumed so the drink part wasn't too far from the truth."

She laughed in delight. "I can't believe you did this!"

"I think last Christmas was pretty miserable for all of us," he said. "So I wanted to make sure that this Christmas was one to remember for the right reasons."

She smiled tenderly at him, her eyes moist with unshed tears. "Well, I would say we're off to a pretty good start, wouldn't you?" she said.

"Definitely makes the top ten in my opinion," he replied, sliding a finger under her chin and dipping his head to kiss her upturned lips.

"Let's see if we can get it to number one before the holiday is out, huh?"

**OOOOOO**

_**An hour before midnight…**_

Absently registering the sound of the shower shutting off in the family bathroom nearby, Lindsay carefully pushed open the door to Lucy's room and peeked in to check on her little girl. Her daughter was fast asleep, her stuffed bunny Molly clutched tightly to her chest. Knowing that this relative peace would probably only last until the first light of dawn, Lindsay quietly retreated, leaving the door slightly ajar as Lucy preferred it to be if she awoke during the night.

With all the presents now wrapped and stacked under the tree, plus three bulging stockings hanging from the fire surround, it was time for her and Danny to indulge in a little couple time. In spite of that, she'd declined his earlier invitation of an intimate shower for two. Fortunately he had accepted her rebuttal without comment, correctly deducing that she had her own plans for tonight. Leaving her to shower alone, he'd busied himself ensuring that everything was ready for tomorrow instead, before heading for the bathroom himself once she was done.

Knowing that it wouldn't be long before Danny joined her, Lindsay turned for the lounge, but paused as she passed the apartment's spare room along the way. Packing crates were stacked two high against the wall - the contents the remnants of her belongings salvaged from her burnt-out former apartment a few blocks away. She'd retrieved the essentials long ago and had replaced most of what was lost with the money from her insurance payout. She'd almost forgotten that Danny still had the rest of her things stored here.

Flicking on the light, she tugged her robe more tightly around her as she stepped into the small room. Danny kept the heat on low in here so there was a definite chill in the air as she crossed the bare wooden floor and absently lifted the lid of one of the crates. She discovered it full of Lucy's baby clothes, all carefully folded and neatly stacked into piles. She knew without knowing how that Danny had packed up this crate for her. The obvious care taken over the myriad of tiny garments could only have come from someone who recognised their true sentimental worth.

The next box she opened contained various items of her own clothing. They were all from the pre-Lucy era, she noted. As it was unlikely that she was ever going to wear any of them again, she figured she probably ought to take them to the charity shop once she'd had the chance to sort through them. Whether she liked it or not, her style had subtly changed when she'd become a wife and mother and so she had no real need of them anymore.

The contents of the third crate tugged at her heart-strings as she lifted the lid and peered inside. Stored within were her keepsakes of Danny. In a battered oblong tin, she discovered a jumble of photographs of the two of them, along with an eclectic collection of silly little notes that he'd left for her either at the Lab or at home over the years. Finally, lining the entire bottom of the crate, she found a range of different-sized jewellery boxes.

She smiled as she flipped open the lid of one of them and saw the cheap and cheerful mood-ring he'd purchased for her from a Flea Market in Brooklyn – the one that had led to a rather memorable lovemaking session against the front door of Danny's previous apartment, she recalled with a smile. Another leather-bound box contained the silver locket he'd bought for her on their first Christmas as man and wife.

Her heart skipped a beat when she suddenly remembered that she'd put her wedding and engagement rings in the same drawer as the other jewellery. Rummaging around in the crate, she quickly discovered that the distinctive blue box was nowhere to be found however. She'd not really thought about it too much at the time - after the fire, there'd been so many other things on her mind - but now, with things between her and Danny back on track, the thought of losing them caused a crack to open in her heart and tears to spring to her eyes.

"Lindsay?" Danny's voice echoed softly from the doorway and she hastily swiped at the wetness on her cheeks.

"I'm all right," she assured him as he crossed to kneel beside her, his face registering his concern. "It's just I think my wedding and engagement rings were lost in the fire."

Danny shook his head. "No, no, they're safe, I have them," he reassured her then shot her a slightly crooked smile. "I might have need of them one of these days so I figured I ought to keep them close at hand."

"Oh," Lindsay replied, not really knowing what to say to this.

Several months ago on a mountain-top in Montana she'd told him that he should ask her to marry him again when he felt the time was right, and he obviously hadn't forgotten that. Were they ready for such a step yet though, she wondered. She didn't honestly know. In some ways they were, but in others? Her heart squeezed apprehensively inside her chest. It was still too soon for them to be making such a decision, she decided. Slow and steady was working for them right now. Running before they could walk could easily end up being a mistake.

"You know, I've never seen the point of Christmas proposals," Danny remarked in a casual tone. Obviously her ambivalent feelings had shown on her face, or maybe it was simply that they were both on the same page in this respect, "New Year ones either for that matter. I mean, why do it on a holiday when it's the perfect excuse for an extra celebration at a different time of year?"

The tension within her subsiding, Lindsay laughed. "Danny!" she rebuked, punching him lightly on the upper arm.

He chuckled, his blue eyes dancing merrily. "Seriously though," he said when their mirth had died down. "You should know that it's not a matter of 'if' anymore. It's more a choice about 'when'. I love you and I want you in my life for a long, long time to come. Don't ever doubt that."

She nodded. "I love you too," she said, her voice quivering with emotion.

"1, 4, 3 forever?" he queried as he leaned in to kiss her.

"Yes exactly, I…" Her eyes widening, she stopped and drew back from him. "Where did you hear that expression?" she asked him.

"I…" Danny frowned as he struggled to recall, and then finally realised from which particular memory it had come. "Err… you," he admitted with a sheepish smile.

"But I never…" She broke off and glanced at the open crate beside her as realisation dawned. "You found the watch I bought for your birthday," she said.

He nodded. "Yeah," he told her, "When I was packing up your apartment after the fire."

Her eyes filled with salty moisture. "I never got the chance to give it to you," she lamented sadly.

"No, no, you didn't," Danny said, reaching out to take her hands in his. "But finding it opened my eyes to a lot of stuff that I'd been blind to before then, so I think it served the purpose you intended it to."

"Just perhaps not quite in the way that you imagined," he went on. "It showed me that your commitment to us had always been there, just buried deep under a lot of other, more painful emotions. It made me realise that there had to be something else going on with you, something that I didn't know about. I guess it gave me hope for our future when I didn't think there was any hope left to be had."

"But why didn't you say anything?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I flew out to Montana, didn't I? You offered me that olive branch and I chose to take it."

"I know but you never…" Lindsay trailed off with a shake of her head. "All this time…"

"Lindsay listen…" He squeezed her fingers lightly. "I knew your heart, but I needed some time to learn to properly trust in it again."

"And do you?" she pressed. "Trust in it, I mean? Trust in me?"

He nodded. "I do now, yes," he assured her.

Her heart full to bursting point, Lindsay reached into the open crate beside her. "Here," she said, lifting out and reverently placing the leather case in his hands. "Merry Christmas," she whispered, well aware of the symbolism behind what she was offering him – her love forever if he chose to accept it.

Her heart almost stopped when he hesitated, but when he then flipped open the lid of the box and carefully withdrew the watch from within, she was glad that he had taken that brief moment to consider. As the metallic clasp closed with an audible click around his wrist, she knew that he was hers in a way that he had never been before.

Meeting his somewhat tentative smile with one of her own, she allowed instinct to take over. Rising to her feet, she held out her hand to help him up and then silently led him from the room and down the hallway to the lounge. "Turn the lights off," she instructed quietly, as she let go of his hand and moved on ahead of him into the room.

Reaching out with one hand, he obediently flipped off the main light switch as he stepped over the threshold after her, leaving the room illuminated only by the twinkling lights of the Christmas decorations. Turning around to face him, her hands dropped to the belt of her robe. Drawing out the process for maximum effect, she slowly undid the bulky knot and then shrugged the heavy garment off her shoulders and let it slide to the floor.

Danny smiled a slow, predatory smile at what her disrobing revealed. "Is that for me?" he asked, his voice gruff as he admired the pure femininity of the short, Christmas-themed baby-doll nightdress she wore.

The flimsy garment was deep ruby-red in colour, its neck and hemlines etched in delicate white lace. Miniature snowflakes, embroidered in snowy-white thread, added a seasonal embellishment to the flowing expanse of silky material, while the matching panties that she wore underneath completed the overall effect. It was sexy and classy with a hint of humour thrown in for good measure – a perfect reflection of the woman she was.

"For both of us," she said, holding out her hands towards him in invitation. "Now come here and make love to me," she urged.

"Whatever the lady wants," he murmured as he moved to join her.

"We're gonna be on the naughty list if Santa catches us, you know," he remarked as he lowered her to the rug in front of the Christmas tree several passion-fuelled minutes later.

Lindsay giggled. "Baby, all I want for Christmas is you," she told him.

"Well, in that case…" Threading his fingers through her hair, he lowered his mouth to hers, stealing her breath away with a mind-numbing kiss before lifting his head to smile down into her eyes. "I think it's about time you unwrapped me," he seductively concluded.

Not needing to be told twice, Lindsay proceeded to do just that and a whole lot more…

**OOOOOO**

_**6 AM, Christmas Day…**_

"Mommy, Daddy! Wake up! Wake up! Santa came! Santa came! Can we open the presents? Can we? Please? Please?"

"Urghh…" Danny groaned as his daughter's exuberant pleas jerked him out of peaceful sleep and into the unfortunate reality of Christmas morning with an excitable four year old. "What time is it?"

"It's morning time!" Lucy announced cheerfully.

"By whose definition?" he responded grumpily, burying his head under his pillow.

He supposed he was partly to blame for overindulging himself last night. He should have been more than content with making slow, passionate love to his wife by the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree, but he'd gone on to repeat the experience a second time in bed later – not necessarily the wisest of decisions when their young daughter was guaranteed to be up at the crack of dawn the next day.

"Mommy – Daddy's being a grumpy bear," Lucy complained, turning her attention to her other parent when her father remained stubbornly uncommunicative.

"Isn't he always?" Lindsay quipped, her voice sounding bright and alert despite the limited amount of sleep that she'd had.

Danny poked his head out from under his pillow and glared at her. "How come you're so chirpy?" he groused.

She laughed. "Babe, I had to feed her every few hours around the clock when she was tiny. Five hours continuous sleep is a positive luxury compared to that."

Tossing back the bedclothes, she slid from the bed and picked up her discarded robe. "Come on, sweetheart. The sooner we get the coffee on, the sooner Daddy starts behaving like a normal human being again."

"But what about the presents?" Lucy asked with a slight pout.

"You can open one while we wait," Lindsay told her.

"Yay!" The little girl cheered and dashed from the room in a flurry of excitement.

Danny let out a long, plaintive groan and Lindsay rolled her eyes. "Come on, Messer – haul that sexy ass outta bed or you're not getting laid again for at least a week."

"That's blackmail," he accused.

She grinned at him. "Absolutely, but you're not gonna risk it, are you?"

Her question needed no reply because she knew him too well. Humming contentedly to herself, she turned on her heel and jauntily followed her daughter out of the room. Danny lay where he was for a moment, taking the time to absorb the blessed quiet, and then – with much grumbling under his breath – inevitably got out of bed as well.

"See that wasn't so bad, was it?" Lindsay said to him an hour or so later as they lounged comfortably side-by-side on the sofa, sipping a second cup of coffee and munching on a breakfast muffin a piece.

Lucy sat cross-legged on the floor in front of them, surrounded by a mountain of ripped-up wrapping paper. She was carefully examining her presents one-by-one now that the heady excitement of their initial opening had passed.

"Mommy? Can we go ice-skating later?" she asked, holding up the little pink ice-skates that she'd listed in her letter to Santa despite having never stepped onto the ice before.

Lindsay had taken her Christmas shopping a couple of weeks earlier and she'd been fascinated by all the skaters on the outdoor ice-rink. The queue had been too long and time too scarce for them to take a turn around the ice themselves though, but Lindsay had promised her disappointed daughter that they could go back another time. Unfortunately, the appropriate opportunity just hadn't presented itself in the busy weeks since. Not wanting her daughter to miss out, Lindsay was determined to make time at some point over the holiday, but was well aware that today it might be somewhat difficult to schedule in.

"We'll see," she said in a non-committal tone. "It really depends if we have enough time after dinner. We can go tomorrow if not, okay?"

"Promise?" Lucy said.

"I promise," her mother replied, earning herself a grateful beam from her daughter.

"I think it's time for Mommy and Daddy's presents, don't you?" Danny murmured low in Lindsay's ear as Lucy turned her attention back to her new toys.

She smiled up at him, her eyes alight with the same suppressed excitement that he'd witnessed in their daughter's gaze earlier that morning. "Is it suitable to be opened in front of a minor?" she enquired with a twinkle.

He laughed. "Yes," he assured her, as he rose to retrieve the silver-wrapped gift-box from under the tree. He sat back down beside her on the sofa and handed the present over. "Merry Christmas, babe."

"It's not too much, is it?" she asked, a little frown creasing her forehead as she examined the rather large box in her hands. "We said we weren't going to go overboard."

"I kept to the rules," he promised her as she carefully removed the shiny metallic wrapping to reveal a plain gold box underneath.

Placing it on her lap, she lifted the lid and looked expectantly inside. It contained a book with something else wrapped in delicate tissue paper underneath. Lifting out the book, she temporarily set the box aside so that she could examine it more closely.

"Oh Danny," she breathed as she slowly turned the pages. It was a picture catalogue of Lucy's life so far, the photos turned into a glossy coffee-table book with various captions printed underneath – captions that from the slightly wry turn of phrase she knew he'd written himself. She looked at him with tears in her eyes. "It's wonderful, thank you."

"Aren't you going to open the rest?" he asked her.

"Don't rush me, I like to savour," she admonished him, but nevertheless picked up the gift-box and lifted out the tissue-paper wrapped bundle. She opened it to reveal a soft, cashmere sweater in subtle shades of pale green and lilac. "You chose this yourself?" she asked him, as she held it up in front of her to get a better look.

He nodded, and then threw her a somewhat self-deprecating smile. "With a little prod in the right direction from a certain room-mate of yours," he admitted.

"Well, it's gorgeous!" she exclaimed, "I love it." Carefully re-wrapping the sweater, she placed it back in the box and then rose to fetch her present for him.

"You could say it's along the same theme as yours," she said as she held it out.

"Great minds think alike, huh?" Danny said, taking it from her as she sat back down. He removed the red and green striped paper to reveal a framed photo of the two of them and Lucy taken at their pre-Thanksgiving dinner party a few weeks back. Accompanying it was a dark maroon shirt with thin stripes of cream and black running through the butter-soft material.

"Thanks babe," he said, and then wrapped a hand around the nape of her neck to draw her close. Their lips met in a series of soft, delicate kisses, the embrace a heartfelt expression of their re-avowed love for each other.

"Merry Christmas, Montana," Danny murmured, brushing her hair out of her shining eyes with gentle fingers.

She placed the palm of her hand over his heart. "Merry Christmas, Danny," she responded quietly, overwhelmed by the sudden wave of emotion that welled within her.

"This time last year, huh?" he remarked soberly, guessing the direction her thoughts were taking.

"I never want to go back there," she vowed strongly.

"We won't," he gently assured her. "We'll never forget, but we're gonna be looking forward rather than back from now on, okay?"

Lindsay nodded. "Here's to new beginnings," she whispered as she leaned her forehead against his.

"To a fresh start," he concurred, his hand rising to tenderly cup her face as his mouth found hers once again.

**OOOOOO**

_**Mid-afternoon…**_

"Blows the cobwebs from the brain that's for sure," Danny commented as he drew in a lungful of crisp, frosty air.

They were taking an after-dinner stroll through a snowy Central Park, having successfully persuaded Lucy that she'd have much more time to ice-skate if they left it until tomorrow. Their little girl skipped on ahead of them on the path, as snug as a bug in a rug in her scarlet-red coat, little black pom-pom hat and matching scarf and gloves. Fake-fur-lined ankle-boots kept her feet warm, while thick woollen panty-hose protected her short legs from the December chill.

"Works off all those extra calories too," Lindsay said, reaching out to prod his stomach.

"I didn't eat that much," he protested. "If I'd been at Ma's I'd've consumed a whole lot more."

"That's because your mother has no sense of portion control when it comes to feeding her family," Lindsay remarked wryly.

Danny laughed. "I know," he said. "She thinks I need fattening up for some reason. I keep telling her that I'm a lean, mean muscle machine."

Lindsay giggled. "With the ego the size of Manhattan to go with it," she quipped.

He looked down his nose at her, taking in her pretty, pink-cheeked appearance. Like Lucy, she was dressed in her Sunday best. A three-quarter length, royal blue coat with oversized black buttons swathed her slender frame, while a black felt hat with a patterned black-and-white trim covered her tousled mane of honey-brown hair. The look was completed with black leather knee-high boots and a chenille scarf and glove set. She looked so prim and proper that he was struck with the outlandish urge to mess her up a little.

Impulsively grabbing a handful of snow from the ground, he tipped it down the back of her neck, making her squeal in protest as she tried to shake it free. "Danny!"

"Revenge is mine," he taunted her playfully, "Ego the size of Manhattan indeed!" he tsk-ed.

Her eyes narrowed as she bent to gather her own handful of snow. "Remember what I told you about my catapulting skills that time?" she asked him, as she shaped it into an ominous-looking ball.

"You used to shoot boys with it as I recall," Danny replied, eyeing her missile with sudden trepidation.

She beamed at him, the glint in her eye full of anticipatory relish. "Well in winter, I became the ultimate snowballing queen instead," she announced, and then quickly took aim and fired while he was still absorbing that pertinent information.

Splat! The snowball hit him square in the chest. "She shoots, she scores!" she intoned in triumph, lifting a raised fist into the air.

"Oh, you wanna play do you, short stuff?" he crooned as he gathered more snow from the frozen ground. "Fine then get ready for war," he finished as he sent a second snowball spinning her way.

She dodged nimbly out the way, but wasn't quite quick enough. It caught her on the shoulder, spraying snow in all directions.

"I used to be a star pitcher in my day, you know," he reminded her. "Are you really sure you want to take me on?"

Lindsay was nothing if not game for a battle. Her answer to his smugly issued challenge was therefore to pelt him with snowball after snowball, bringing Lucy squealing into the fray when he countered with a fierce and determined resistance.

"My sliding into base wasn't bad either," he remarked as he tackled her to the ground several minutes later and determinedly rubbed a handful of snow into her face. "You give in?" he crowed, flipping her over onto her back and pinning her hands to the ground either side of her head.

Panting slightly from her exertions, Lindsay nodded, her eyelashes glistening with powdery snow and her nose glowing red from the cold. "I surrender to your superior skill," she acquiesced, submissively lowering her gaze.

Releasing her hands, he bent to claim his victory kiss, unaware of the impending misfortune that was about to befall him. He should have realised that it had all been too easy of course, but as her lips moved purposefully over his, he was temporarily distracted by other concerns.

"Sucker!" she whispered into their kiss just before she poured a handful of snow down the back of his coat.

"Arghh!" he exclaimed, leaping to his feet as the cold wet trickled unpleasantly down his spine.

Lindsay collapsed into laughter as he shook himself like a bedraggled dog. "I got Daddy good," she told Lucy conspiratorially, making the little girl giggle in childish delight.

"We're all wet and snowy," Lucy proclaimed, indicating her ice-encrusted coat.

"We are," Lindsay agreed solemnly, and then smiled broadly, "Which is why we get to make Snow Angels today."

Lucy's eyes widened. "Really? We do?" she asked in awe.

"Yep," Lindsay said, rolling over and climbing to her feet. "Come on." She caught her daughter's hand and trudged up the forty-five degree incline nearby to locate an undisturbed and suitably thick patch of snow for what they had in mind. "I think this is the spot, don't you?" she declared, pointing out her selection.

Lucy nodded enthusiastically. "Daddy – we're making Snow Angels," she called out over her shoulder to her father.

"All right so you have to hold your arms wide like this," Lindsay demonstrated as Danny jogged up the hill to join them.

"I go in the middle," Lucy instructed peremptorily, "Then Daddy here." She pointed to her right side. "And Mommy here." She indicated her left.

Her parents complied before Lindsay picked up the narrative again. "Okay so with your arms out like so, you fall backwards into the snow - but be careful that you don't bang your head, okay?"

Lucy nodded earnestly in response to this warning.

"So are we ready?" Lindsay sing-songed.

"Yes!" Lucy cried out in joyful reply.

"All right then. One… Two… Three… Go!"

The three of them fell back as one with Danny and Lindsay keeping a tight grip on Lucy's hands so that they could cushion her fall a little. They landed in the pillow of waiting snow with a soft plop and much hilarity.

"You have to wave your arms and legs like this," Lucy said before her mother could point this out. Giggling uncontrollably, she wildly scissored her arms and legs, while her parents smiled fondly at each other over her prone form.

"Now," Lindsay announced in a hushed tone after she and Danny had constructed their own Angels. "We have to get up _very_ carefully or our Christmas Angels will get all smushed and we wouldn't want that, would we?"

"No," Lucy agreed, solemnly shaking her head.

"Oh wow! They're so cool!" she exclaimed a short while later as she looked down at their combined handiwork.

Running over to a nearby tree, the little girl retrieved a fallen branch from the ground. "You have to draw 'Messer' underneath," she told her father as she handed him her make-shift writing tool.

"Okay. Do you remember which letter it starts with?" Danny asked her.

"'M' for Mommy," Lucy told him, puffing out her chest proudly at her perceived cleverness.

"And then it's 'E' for Elephant," Lindsay continued after Danny had sketched out the 'M' in the snow.

"And then 'S' for…"

"Snake!" Lucy interrupted, clapping her hands. "And then another 'S' because the snake Mommy had twins!"

Danny laughed out loud at that. "Who told you that?"

"Mommy did. I right, aren't I, Mommy?" Lucy appealed to her mother. "There are two snakes in Messer, aren't they?"

"There sure are, sweetie - well done!" Lindsay animatedly congratulated her little girl. "It helps her remember," she added in a defensive undertone to her grinning husband.

"So what's next?" he enquired when he'd finished the so-called snake twins.

Lucy frowned as she tried to recall. "I can't 'member," she said, the corners of her mouth drooping a little as she hit a frustrating blank.

"It's 'E' for Elephant again," her mother reminded her.

"Oh yes, I 'member now," Lucy said, her expression inverting into a happy smile once more.

"Right so what's the last letter?" Danny asked once he'd drawn the second 'E' in the snow.

"I know! I know!" Lucy squealed, jumping up and down like a released jack-in-a-box. "It's 'R' for Rabbit!"

"There," Danny declared as he finished with a flourish. "All done."

The winter sun was just about to dip below the horizon as he straightened up and stepped back to admire the finished picture. Orange and red streaks painted the sky with vivid colour, while the snow shone brilliantly white in the gathering twilight. The three Snow Angels lay before them in an intimate trio, their wings touching tip-to-tip and the word M-E-S-S-E-R spelt out in bold capitals underneath. It was somehow a reflection of what Christmas was all about – family, togetherness, and a celebration of the lowly birth of a special child from upon high.

Bending down, he gathered Lucy into his arms, shifting her onto his left hip as she wound her little arms around his neck and rested her head against his shoulder. Stepping closer to his wife, he reached out for her hand as she gazed mesmerised at the Snow Angels in front of them. He could see unshed tears glittering in her eyes and knew she was as moved as he was by the symbolic picture they presented.

He squeezed her fingers and she looked up at him, blinking back the happy moisture from her eyes. "Home?" he suggested in a soft undertone.

She smiled tenderly at him. "Home," she echoed with an answering nod.

Turning around, the family Messer made their way slowly back down the hill to the main path, leaving their Christmas Angels behind them in the glistening snow…

_**To be continued…**_

_**A/N2**: So did you remember Danny's watch from right back at the beginning of this story? I was originally going to call this chapter 'What goes around comes around' in reference to that, but then I wrote Lindsay's words to Danny just before they made love on Christmas Eve and decided that that was a more apt title._

_Anyway, I hope 2012 brings health and happiness to you all. Till next time then._

_CharmedBec x_


	42. The Yellow Brick Road

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi! New update for you. Sorry about the wait – work has been crazy this month so I've not had much time to write. Anyway, here it finally is, hope you enjoy!

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 42 – The Yellow Brick Road**_

_**Three weeks later…**_

"So what exactly are you waiting for boy?"

Danny heaved an exasperated sigh at Bert's typically direct query. "I didn't have to meet you for breakfast, you know," he said rather tetchily. "If I'd known I was going to get the third degree, I'd have stayed at home."

"That girl's a keeper;" his friend said. "I've always told you that."

"I know you have and I agree with you," Danny replied, running an agitated hand through his short, spiky hair as he vainly tried to explain his reasoning. "But we need to do this in our own time, Bert. Lindsay's still nervous…"

"Then you should damn well do something to reassure her, shouldn't you?" Bert interrupted.

"Geez!" Danny exclaimed, throwing his hands up in frustrated defeat. "I'm doing my best goddamn it! But – in case you've forgotten - her self-confidence was at rock bottom not so long ago so it's been an uphill struggle a lot of the time. Things are good between us at the moment and I don't want to push it. It's important that we do things at our own pace, and that means making sure that we're properly ready for each step before we take it."

"Just don't let things grind to a halt in the mean time," Bert warned. "Relationships have to evolve in order to survive. The two of you are happy right now and I know that probably feels like a safe place to be after all you've been through. But don't let fear stop you from moving on with your lives, you'll regret it if you do. Life's too short for procrastination; take it from one who knows."

Danny took a contemplative sip of his drink before answering. This was happening more and more often lately. Their friends and family were all as eager as newborn puppies for him and Lindsay to take that final step towards full reconciliation, and just couldn't understand why they were holding back. As far as he was concerned though, they weren't holding back, they were simply taking their time and not rushing into things before they were ready.

Why was that so difficult for everyone to understand, he wondered. After all, most people dated for several years before they got married, didn't they? You'd think they were committing some cardinal sin by wanting to savour being the normal couple that they'd never gotten to be first time around. Everybody seemed utterly convinced that if they didn't move back in together immediately, then it was all going to fall apart on them again.

He had no such worries however. In fact, he felt the complete opposite was true. He and Lindsay had spent a lovely few days together over Christmas and New Year for example. Yes, they'd had their child in tow for most of it, but otherwise they were like any other new couple enjoying their first holiday season as two halves of a committed whole. They were finally able to take pleasure in each other's company with no hidden expectations or agendas getting in the way.

As a result, he felt closer to his wife now than he had in all the time he'd known her and that had to be a good omen for their future, didn't it? Over the past few months they'd torn down so many of the barriers that used to exist between them, letting one another in like they'd never done before. He'd always loved her, of course he had, but he'd never loved her like this and he knew that Lindsay felt the same way. He just wished that everyone else could understand what the two of them simply knew. They were finally on the right path. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, this was their yellow brick road, their way back to their 'no place like home'.

"We're not planning on waiting forever, you know," he said. "I mean it's not as if we're only just starting out together, is it? I don't think a couple more months is going to hurt any - it'll only make us stronger in the end."

"And what about Lindsay?" Bert asked. "How does she feel about the situation?"

"The same as me," Danny told his friend with conviction. "We talked about it over Christmas actually. She's comfortable with where we're at the moment – we both are. We both agreed that the next step is a little ways off for us yet, but that doesn't mean we're afraid to take it - in spite of what everyone seems to think to the contrary."

"We only want what's best for you both," Bert argued, "And for little Lucy as well of course."

"I know that," Danny acknowledged with an incline of his head, "And we appreciate the support, honestly we do, but we could do without all the expectation even so."

"All right," Bert said, holding his hand up in surrender. "We'll say no more about it. I just wanted to make sure that you weren't letting the grass grow under your feet, that's all."

"Well, I'm not so you can rest easy," Danny said as he drained the last dregs of coffee from his cup. Their waitress immediately appeared at his elbow with a freshly brewed pot on offer. He smiled congenially up at her. "I swear you have empty coffee cup radar, Maddy," he remarked with a low chuckle.

She smiled at him. "Comes of twenty years in the business," she said as she refilled his cup for him. "You want another pastry to go with that?"

He pretended to think about it, tapping his forefinger against his chin in faux deliberation. "Well," he said slowly. "I suppose it would be rude to say no…" He flashed her a mischievous grin and she laughed.

"Bert?" she enquired, turning to her other customer. "How about you?"

"A woman after my own heart, she is," Bert remarked expansively to Danny as he patted his stomach in hungry anticipation.

Maddy rolled her eyes. "If you were twenty years younger maybe," she shot back cheekily; making Danny almost spit a mouthful of coffee over the table in amused reaction.

"Tell me something - why do we keep gracing her with our custom again?" Bert quipped to his companion, not realising what he was saying until after he'd said it.

Danny's jovial expression faded a little as he looked out the window at the irrevocably altered skyline, his eyes lost in sudden remembrance. "So we never forget," he murmured with feeling.

Bert and Maddy exchanged a significant look, both of them also recalling that fateful day over a decade before. "So we never forget," they echoed in perfect unison.

**OOOOOO**

It was going to be one of _those_ days, Lindsay thought darkly as she fought her way out of the crowded subway station up onto the equally crowded street above.

Ever since she'd gotten out of bed that morning, it had been one thing after another. In the first instance, she'd tripped over one of Lucy's toys in the hallway and had fallen flat on her face with a bone-jarring thud. The subsequent scolding she'd delivered to her errant daughter for not clearing up after herself had unfortunately ended with the little girl in floods of genuinely miserable tears when she'd realised too late that Lucy had picked up a cold from somewhere and was not her usual chirpy self that morning.

After she'd cuddled her daughter back into some semblance of calm, she'd set about dosing the little girl up with cold medicine, all the while cursing herself for her lack of motherly attention. Of course then Lucy hadn't wanted her to leave. Normally, she would have tried to swap shifts with someone if her daughter was sick, but she was due to testify as an expert witness later so unless she wanted to get arrested for contempt of court, she had to go – a fact that her four year old had a lot of trouble understanding when all she wanted was for her Mommy to stay home and make her feel better. The histrionics that followed did nothing to lighten Lindsay's mood. She'd left a plaintively sobbing Lucy in Shelley's more than capable hands with guilt weighing heavy on her soul and her mind on anything other than the court hearing ahead.

To make matters worse, her subway train had unexpectedly terminated its journey two stops from where she needed to be due to some kind of problem with the line ahead, which had forced her to travel the rest of the way to the Crime Lab on foot. Clad in high heels rather than her usually sensible foot attire, her toes felt as if they were trapped in a vice and she was sure she was getting a blister on her right heel too. All things considered, she was not in the best of moods when she finally arrived at work over fifteen minutes late for her shift.

"Hey Linds! Wait up!" she heard a familiar voice call as she pushed the button for the elevator in the foyer.

She turned and nodded curtly at Flack in greeting as he appeared at her shoulder. "Well, whaddya know – the girl's got legs," he said, irreverently remarking on the short pencil skirt that she wore.

"What's up?" he asked when she failed to return his friendly banter.

"Don't ask," she said darkly.

He folded his arms across his chest. "That bad, huh?"

"I should have stayed in bed," she said as they stepped into the elevator together. She glanced over at him as the door swished closed behind them "Lucy has a cold," she informed him.

"And you're due in court to testify in the Maloney case," he remembered.

She nodded. "I'm a horrible mother, Don," she said guiltily, "Leaving my baby with the sitter when I should be at home with her myself."

Flack shook his head. "You're an amazing mother, Linds. And we're talking a normal, everyday cold here, right? Not borderline pneumonia?"

"Just a cold," she confirmed. "She probably picked it up from one of other kids at her pre-school."

"Well, I'm sure your sitter's perfectly capable of taking care of things then."

"Of course she is, but that's not the point. Lucy was crying for me."

"She'll have forgotten all about it later," he soothed. "Have you called Danno?"

"Not yet, no – I was running late and…" She broke off and shrugged. "I've gotten a little too used to handling things by myself, I guess. I should have called him, shouldn't I?"

Flack looked at her quizzically. "You mean you wouldn't have done before?" he enquired with a frown.

"I would have told him she was sick," Lindsay assured him, "But I wouldn't have expected him to look after her when it wasn't his day for it. I suppose that's bad, but negotiating the minefield of divorce and shared custody is a tricky business, Don. It's best to agree a set of ground-rules and then stick to them. That way there is no room for unnecessary argument."

"But you're not on the brink of divorce anymore, are you?" Flack pointed out, "Quite the opposite in fact. Danny's there for you twenty-four-seven if you need him, you should know that. I don't think that was ever _not_ the case if you want to know the truth."

Lindsay sighed. "I suppose I needed to prove that I could handle things on my own. Pride comes before a fall, isn't that what they say? And I fell flat on my face, didn't I?" she went on a little wryly. "I think you can safely say that I failed spectacularly in my attempt at single motherhood, don't you?"

"I think if divorce had been the right thing for you then you would have coped with the situation much better," Flack said wisely. "You're a strong woman, Lindsay, but you love with everything that's in you from what I've seen. If you were truly ready to let go of your marriage then I'm sure you would have handled things just fine."

"Don't look at me like that," he protested uncomfortably when she turned soft, wet eyes upon him, touched by his vote of confidence in her ability to endure.

Standing on her tip-toes, she kissed his cheek. "Thank you," she said as she stepped out of the elevator ahead of him.

"You're welcome," he replied, and then pointed his finger imperiously at her. "Call Danny."

She showed him the cell phone that she'd just fished out of her purse for that very purpose and he nodded approvingly before his face split into a wide grin. "He hates it when she's sick," he remarked with more than a little relish in his tone.

Lindsay laughed. "If I didn't know better, I would think that's the only reason you suggested calling him," she said.

He crossed his eyes at her. "And what makes you think it wasn't?" he countered.

She smiled warmly at him. "Because I know you," she said.

"That's what you think!" he called out after her as they headed off in opposite directions – her to the locker-room and him to seek out Mac in his office.

"Hey babe!" Danny's voice sounded in her ear as he answered her call a short while later. "How ya doin'?"

"Not so great right now. Lucy's come down with a cold and I had to leave her with Shelley because I'm in court later and… well, you can imagine how that went down. I know it's your day off and you've probably got other plans, but can you go over there? I know she'll be fine with Shelley, but she'll be better with one of us."

"Linds, I may have other plans, but they're nothing I can't rearrange if my family needs me," Danny told her. "Why didn't you call me straightaway?"

"I don't know – I got a bit stressed and didn't think I guess. It's not as if I'm waking up beside you everyday, is it? I mean if you'd been there…"

"The inference being I should have been, I take it?" Danny cut in a little snappily.

"I didn't say that," Lindsay retorted. "But I have gotten used to handling things by myself so I'm sorry if calling you wasn't the first thing I thought of, okay? If you don't like it…"

"I don't like it."

"So sue me! Geez! I'm a bad wife as well as a bad mother now am I?"

"Lindsay, you're neither, but you _are_ starting to piss me off so let's discuss this later, all right?"

"Fine!" Lindsay snapped and then hit the end call button before he could respond further.

Banging the flat of her hand against her locker-door, she silently screamed inside her head. She knew that she should have called him so he hadn't needed to press the point, had he? Her defences triggered, she'd hit back where she knew it would hurt and now regretted doing so. Inferring that he wasn't always there for the two of them had been a low blow on her part, especially as she knew how much he'd struggled with no longer having day-to-day contact with Lucy when they'd separated.

Resting her forehead against the cool metal of her locker, she closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths to calm herself. Her stomach was roiling unpleasantly and the sudden tension inside had set off a dull throb at her right temple. Things had been going so well between her and Danny recently. Had they lulled themselves into a false sense of security because of that? Maybe they weren't yet as reconciled as she believed. Maybe there was still a significant way for them to go before things got easier for them.

Their disagreement had been stupid and petty, but that's how it had started before, wasn't it? She didn't know whether she had the strength to go through it all again. The last few months had been tough and she'd been grateful that they finally seemed to be coming out of the other end of it. To be pulled back into that place of uncertainty again filled her with dread. How much more could their marriage withstand? They'd successfully fought their way through so many obstacles. For them to stumble at the final hurdle just didn't bear thinking about.

_Brring… Brring…_

The sound of her cell pulled her out of her musings, forcing her to focus on something other than her personal problems for a time. "Hey Marcus," she greeted the prosecutor in the Maloney case. "What's up?"

"Hey Lindsay. Is there any chance you make it over to my office a little earlier today?" he enquired. "I know we said eleven, but one of our key witnesses crumbled on the stand a bit yesterday, so we need to make doubly sure that your testimony is watertight this afternoon."

Lindsay nodded, although he couldn't see her. "Sure," she agreed. "I'll be there in twenty, okay?"

"Good," Marcus said. "I'll see you soon then."

After he'd rung off, Lindsay went to collect the Maloney case report from her desk so that she could review her findings before taking the stand. Her disagreement with Danny and her abandonment of her sick child were still nagging at her conscience, but she couldn't afford to let that derail her from the task at hand. The case hadn't been open-and-shut forensically, but they'd all been certain of their perp's guilt by the end of it. Her testimony therefore had the ability to swing the outcome of the trial one way or the other, and she'd never forgive herself if she allowed the defence attorney to pick holes in the evidence. She had to set her personal issues aside because Guy Metcalf needed to be put away for a very long time.

**OOOOOO**

Oblivious to his wife's battle with her personal demons, Danny in contrast was fairly relaxed about the whole debacle. Yes, he was irritated and a little pissed off, but their spat hadn't sent him careening off into an agony of doubt. He simply accepted it as one of those things. They were both strong-willed individuals so it was inevitable that they'd rub each other up the wrong way every so often. As long at it didn't happen on a regular basis then he saw no reason to worry. Consequently, his mind was more focused on his sick daughter as he pushed the doorbell of Stella's apartment and stepped back to await a response.

Shelley opened the door a few moments later and smiled when she saw him standing in the hallway. "Lindsay called you, I take it?" she said as she moved aside to let him in.

Danny nodded as he stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him. "Yeah, she knew I was off work today so she asked me to come over."

"She needn't have worried – Lucy's calmed down now," Shelley said.

"I figured she would have," he remarked with a shrug, "But even so…"

"There's nothing like a cuddle from Mommy or Daddy when you're not feeling so hot, huh?" Shelley interjected.

He grinned. "No offence, but we did feel that it would be better if one of us was here with her right now."

"None taken," Shelley replied easily. "She's only four so you and Lindsay are pretty much her whole world at the moment."

"You can take the rest of the day off if you want," Danny offered magnanimously. "I'll stick around here until Lindsay gets home. You were expecting Luce to be at pre-school for most of the day, weren't you? The sudden change in schedule has got to have messed you around a little."

"Well yeah," Shelley agreed with an incline of her head, "But you pay me to be Lucy's nanny and that means staying home with her when she's sick if necessary."

Danny nodded his acceptance of this. "So how is she anyway?" he asked.

"A bit miserable but nothing some rest and a few cuddles won't cure," Shelley assured him. "She's tucked up in bed with a picture-book right now."

"Well, she was anyway," she added, nodding beyond his shoulder to where a pyjama-clad Lucy had appeared in the lounge doorway, drawn by the sound of her father's voice.

"I sick, Daddy," she told him as he crossed the room in a couple of strides and lifted her effortlessly up into his arms.

"I know, baby," he said, smoothing her hair back from her clammy face. She looked a bit pale, her eyes were puffy and her button nose swollen red, but - as Shelley had intimated - she appeared more under the weather than ill.

"Mommy had to go to work," she told him forlornly, as she wrapped her little arms round his neck and laid her head down on his shoulder.

"I know, she called me," he said. "Will lots of cuddles from Daddy make up for that, do you think?"

"I still gets Mommy cuddles when she gets home?" she asked rather than immediately agreeing to his suggestion.

He chuckled and kissed the top of her head. "I was hoping for a better answer," he remarked, "But yes you still get Mommy cuddles too."

"Okay," she told him drowsily. "I have Daddy cuddles."

"So nice to be second best," he murmured to Shelley.

The young nanny smiled. "Mommy's are usually number one for cuddles and comfort, but Daddy's get to be the fun one so I wouldn't complain," she told him.

He nodded as he instinctively swayed side-to-side with his daughter in his arms. To be honest, it didn't bother him in the slightest that Lucy preferred Lindsay's company when she was ill. This he could handle, but anything more serious – like the stomach virus she'd picked up in Montana last fall – and he tended to go to pieces. Him, Mr Tough New York Police Detective disarmed completely by the normal childhood sufferings of a little girl. His own precious little girl, granted, but an innocent child nonetheless - if only the hardened criminals he routinely tackled to the ground knew the incredible power of the four year old female currently cradled in his arms.

"So how about Daddy reads you a nice long story, huh?" he suggested to Lucy as Shelley began to gather up her things to leave. He knew that his daughter wasn't going to be up to her normal level of energetic play right now, but he was loath to stick her in front of the TV all day.

"Okay," Lucy agreed, sniffing a little and wiping her runny nose on the back of her hand. "I gots slime," she told him, holding up her hand for him to look.

"It's called mucus," he said with a grimace. "And it isn't polite to wipe your nose with your hand. That's what tissues are for." Sitting down on the sofa with his daughter in his lap, he leaned forward and grabbed a tissue from the box that Shelley had put on the coffee table in readiness for such an occurrence. He held it up to the little girl's nose. "Take a deep breath and blow," he instructed.

Lucy did so – noisily. "Yuck," she commented when he grabbed another tissue to clean up her hand. She then gazed up at him with inquisitive eyes. "Why I gots moo-cus, Daddy?" she asked.

"Your body is producing it to fight your cold," he told her.

She looked at him, puzzled, and he attempted to put it more simply. "It traps the germs."

"The germs that gives me the cold and makes me feel bad?" she enquired, beginning to grasp the concept.

"Yeah," he said. "That's why we have to blow it out, and then throw the tissue away."

"So the germs can't get back in?"

"So the germs can't get back in," he confirmed with a nod.

She thought about it for a moment. "Cool," she decided.

He laughed. "I guess the human body is pretty cool sometimes," he agreed.

She laid her head against his chest and snuggled closer. "Daddy read me my story now," she said.

He hugged her close and kissed the top of her head. "Okay," he said. "But let's get you some juice and Daddy a cup of coffee first, hey? Do you want to go and choose some books to read while I make the drinks?" he asked as he rose to his feet and set her onto hers.

Lucy shook her head as she clambered back onto the sofa, lay down on her side and curled up into a foetal position. "No, Daddy choose," she said around the thumb that she'd also jammed in her mouth.

He crouched down next to her and ran a soothing hand up and down the curve of her spine. "All right, pumpkin," he said softly. "Daddy'll choose."

**OOOOOO**

_**Later that afternoon…**_

As she stepped out of the elevator and started down the corridor to the apartment she shared with Stella, Lindsay paused for a moment to settle her nerves. Her testimony had gone well, thanks in part to her ability to compartmentalise her personal and professional lives. Of course, on the journey back home, her focus had shifted back to the events of that morning and the simmering apprehension had returned with a vengeance.

She'd received a text from Danny around noon, telling her that Lucy was doing fine and that he'd see her later, but she couldn't glean anything from that about his current state of mind. Was he still angry with her, she wondered. The text was devoid of any kind of personal communication so it was hard to tell. At least he'd sent it though. He could have left her hanging, but had instead chosen to reassure her. That had to be a good sign, didn't it? She hoped so in any case.

Danny looked up from the newspaper he was reading at the sound of the key in the lock, rising to his feet as Lindsay nervously entered the apartment. "Hey!" he greeted her easily.

"Hey!" she responded rather awkwardly, wrapping her arms about her middle in an unconsciously defensive gesture. "Umm… how's Lucy?"

"Doing better, I think," he said, "But she's pretty wiped out. I put her down for a nap a couple of hours ago and she's been out for the count ever since. I was just thinking I should probably wake her up or she's gonna be up half the night."

Lindsay nodded, her teeth gnawing at her bottom lip.

Danny's eyes narrowed. "Is anything wrong?" he asked her. "Did it go badly in court today?"

She shook her head. "No, no, it went fine, I just…" Her eyes filled. "I'm sorry about this morning."

"This morning?" Danny queried with a puzzled frown, and then his expression shifted as he realised what she meant. "Lindsay come on," he gently chided. "That was nothing - a silly cross word that's all."

"That's how it started before though," she reminded him.

He crossed the room towards her. "Have you been worrying about this all day?" he said, as he curled a hand around the nape of her neck and drew her close.

She wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face against his shirt. "I don't like it when we fight."

He kissed the top of her head. "Me neither, but I'm not going to go off into a tailspin about it. There are times when we're going to be in a bad mood with each other, it's unrealistic for us to expect otherwise."

"It just feels like it did before…" she started.

"It's nothing like before," Danny interjected, winding his fingers into her hair and gently tugging her head back so that she had to look up into his eyes. "Would you have come home and been honest about how you felt before?" he asked her pointedly.

She shook her head. "No but…"

"Well then…"

She dropped her gaze. "I shouldn't have said what I said about you not being around for us."

"And I shouldn't have taken offence so quickly either. Bert had been giving me a hard time about us taking our time over making things official again and it hit a raw nerve, I suppose."

The tension in her starting to dissipate, Lindsay shook her head with some incredulity. "How can you be so relaxed about the whole thing?" she asked.

"I guess because my emotions aren't heightened by depression the way yours are," he pointed out as sensitively as he could.

Lindsay's brow creased. "You think I'm over-reacting?" she said.

He kissed her forehead. "Maybe just a little, yeah," he replied, "But that's all right - it's to be expected really, isn't it? One argument does not mean it's all unravelling at the seams though, okay?"

Lindsay nodded slowly. "I suppose you're right," she admitted.

"I'm _always_ right," he quipped with a lop-sided grin.

"Well, I wouldn't go _that_ far," she shot back with a smile.

He dropped a sound kiss on her lips. "How about you go rouse the little princess from her beauty sleep, huh?" he suggested. "She's been waiting all day for her Mommy cuddles. Apparently Daddy's don't quite cut the mustard."

Lindsay giggled. "You're feeling a little relegated, huh?"

He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. "Nah, it's just means that she views me as the cool one," he said, and then nimbly dodged out of the way of the retaliatory slap she aimed his way.

He laughed. "I'll make us some tea," he said, heading for the kitchen while she moved off in the opposite direction.

"I think there are some cookies in the cupboard," she told him over her shoulder.

"I know I already found them. If I have to read about princesses and fairies for hours on end then I need a sugar-fix to fortify me," he told her.

Lindsay laughed. "You wanna trade her for a son and talk baseball and bugs?" she asked.

"Trade? No." He shook his head and then glanced at her speculatively. "A son _would_ level out the playing field around here though."

She smiled. "You might end up with another daughter," she warned him.

"And I'd love her as much as I do the first," he returned.

"I guess we'll just have to wait and see what we get then, huh?" she said.

He nodded with a smile. "I guess we will," he agreed.

**OOOOOO**

_**Later that evening…**_

The apartment was quiet as Stella entered. The lingering smell of homemade lasagne and garlic bread permeated the air, making her stomach grumble with hunger. If there was one thing she enjoyed about sharing her apartment with Lindsay and her little girl, it was that there always seemed to be a freshly cooked meal on offer when she arrived home. It sure beat the take-out or nuked food that she was used to. She was about to call out to announce her homecoming when a muffled sound from nearby stayed her tongue. Shedding her high heels, she crossed the floor on stocking-ed feet and peered over the back of the sofa, smiling at the heart-warming sight that greeted her.

The three of them were asleep, a blanket-wrapped Lucy cradled in her mother's protective arms and the two of them surrounded in Danny's all encompassing embrace. Lindsay's head was nestled in the crook of her husband's neck, while his cheek rested comfortably against her hair. She was tempted to leave them as they were, but knew that the two adults would probably wake up with more than a few aches and pains if they slept in that position all night.

Moving around to the front of the sofa, she knelt down and gently shook Danny awake. "Mmm, hey Stell'," he murmured, blinking drowsily. "I guess we fell asleep, huh?"

She smiled. "I guess you did. How's the little sweetheart?" she asked, reaching out to lightly stroke Lucy's cheek. "Flack told me she was sick."

"She's fine – a bit of a cold that's all. She'll be over it in a couple of days."

"And Lindsay? She seemed a bit tense when I spoke to her earlier."

"Tough day," he replied vaguely. "She doesn't like leaving Lucy when she's not well."

Stella nodded, accepting this as the main reason for her colleague's earlier distraction. "So is that lasagne I smell?" she enquired a little too eagerly.

Danny chuckled. "Yeah – help yourself," he said, shifting position slightly and jolting a dozing Lindsay awake. "Hey sleepy-head!" he greeted her with a smile as she opened her eyes and looked up into his face.

"Hey!" she responded softly before she became aware that they were no longer alone. "Oh, hi Stella," she greeted. "When'd you get home?"

"Just now," her friend told her, running her fingers through her tumbling mane of dark, curly hair. "I was just about to steal some of your leftover lasagne."

"Seeing as you're giving me and Lucy a place to stay, I would say you're entitled to," Lindsay told her with a smile. "It's Danny's Mom's recipe so it's the real deal."

"Doesn't mean you get to know the secret ingredient though," Danny cut in. "You've got to be a Messer to be party to that." He glanced curiously at his wife. "When did Ma give _you_ the recipe?" he asked.

"Not long after Lucy was born," Lindsay told him. "She was grateful that I'd tamed her wayward son but still wanted to make sure I fed him properly."

Danny laughed. "She thinks you tamed me, huh?"

Lindsay shrugged. "What she doesn't know won't hurt her," she said.

"And she's not entirely wrong anyway," Stella pointed out sagely. "She changed you whether you like it or not," she added off Danny's somewhat affronted look. "You're still you, but there's an extra maturity there that you didn't possess before."

Danny exchanged a look with his wife. "I don't know whether I should be insulted by that or not," he remarked drolly.

Lindsay laughed, temporarily shifting Lucy into his arms as she rose to her feet. "You were a little boy before you met me," she told him confidently as she bent down to heft her sleeping daughter back into her arms, "But now you're a man."

She smoothed her hand over Lucy's honey-blonde curls and pressed a kiss to her temple. "I'm going to put this little one to bed," she informed them before heading for the hallway that led to the apartment's three bedrooms.

"Do you want to put her in with us?" Danny asked as he caught up with her a few moments later.

Lindsay paused to consider. "No," she eventually decided. "She seems to be sleeping pretty soundly right now and I don't want her to get into the habit of not sleeping in her own bed. If she wakes up in the night then I may bring her in with us if she doesn't settle back off easily, but let's just see how it goes, okay?"

"Okay," Danny agreed with a nod.

"Does that mean you're staying over tonight then?" Lindsay asked, laying Lucy down in the bed after he'd pulled the bedclothes aside for her.

"I was planning to, yeah," Danny replied as she tucked the comforter over their sleeping daughter and reached out to adjust the nightlight. "Why? Is that a problem?"

"No, of course not," Lindsay said as they turned for the door. "It's just… it's been a long day and I'm tired, Danny."

"Don't worry, I'll keep my hands to myself," he commented dryly as they headed back out into the hall.

"I'm not worried. I'm just not in the mood right now and I don't want you staying over under any false pretence."

"What?" she demanded as he drew to a halt and stared at her in stunned disbelief.

Danny shot a contemplative glance towards the apartment's living area and then caught hold of her wrist and unceremoniously hauled her into her bedroom.

"Danny!" she protested, shaking her hand free as he flipped on the light and firmly closed the door behind them.

"My staying over doesn't automatically mean I'm after sex," he said in a rigidly controlled tone. He was angry, he couldn't help it, but he knew what she'd been through with her ex, Simon in this respect and so partly understood her attitude – however uncalled for it was.

"I… I didn't say…"

"Yeah Lindsay, you did," he contradicted.

She looked at him with wide, deer-in-headlights eyes. "I'm sorry. I just…"

"I know," he cut in, "But let's get a couple of things straight here all right? One - you and me in the same bed does not always have to equal sex. And two - it's okay for you to 'not be in the mood' occasionally. I'd be a little worried if you weren't ever in the mood, but after a long, stressful day I won't be offended by a brush-off."

Lindsay nodded. "I'm know," she said, "It's just that you've been so… enthusiastic lately and I…" She broke off as he started to laugh. "Danny!"

"Babe, I've been enthusiastic because a year ago I thought I'd never have the pleasure again and now… well now I'm looking forward to a lifetime with you and it feels good."

"Today's not been such a great day for us though," she said, playing devil's advocate to his seemingly unrelenting optimism.

"Today has been a challenging day for many reasons, but they're teething troubles, Linds. It's a good sign in a way. It means that we're being less careful around each other, relaxing back into things."

She bit her bottom lip. "I wanted to believe I was better. That I'd put it all behind me."

Closing the gap between them, he framed her face in his hands. "You _are_ getting better, anybody with eyes can see that," he assured her. "And so are we, but it'll be a while before we're over it completely. You need to relax, have a little patience. You're still carrying around so much tension inside. I think you need to do something positive to help you let go of that a little – I don't know, maybe take up yoga or something."

"I used to enjoy Pilates," Lindsay told him, "But I stopped classes while I was pregnant and never went back after Lucy was born." Caught up in the whirlwind of unexpected and first-time motherhood, it was a leisure activity that she'd dropped because there just hadn't seemed to be enough hours in the day for everything.

"So you should take it up again," Danny said. "Pilates is supposed to help with balancing the chakras or something, isn't it?"

Lindsay laughed. "It helps alleviate stress and aids relaxation, yes. Gives you great abs too," she added, running a hand over her 'baby belly' as she called it.

"So you'll find a suitable class and sign up for it?" Danny encouraged.

It concerned him how much she was taking what were essentially trivial events to heart. Over-reacting to every little thing was almost as damaging as ignoring the situation completely in his opinion. It turned minor occurrences into major events, made mountains out of mole-hills. It couldn't be healthy – for her or for their relationship. He'd read enough of the literature he'd been given, and understood from the support group that he went to as often as his work schedule allowed, that this was a symptom of her illness though. He remembered one guy at the group mentioning that Yoga had helped his girlfriend find some inner balance and perspective so he figured it was worth Lindsay giving it a try.

He hated to think of her getting so upset over events that were frankly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Of course it was important that they talked through any disagreements they had, but Lindsay had let it blight her whole day and that wasn't a good thing. He felt powerless to help her though. It was all right him telling her that she shouldn't worry so much; it was another thing entirely getting her to do it. In her own mind, their clash _had_ seemed like the end of the world. Yes, he'd been able to talk her down from the ledge when it came to it, but he hadn't been able to prevent her from climbing up there in the first place. It was something that she would have to learn to combat herself. All he could really do was support her as much as he could in her endeavours to do that.

"Linds?" he prompted when she didn't immediately answer.

"Sure," she agreed. She brought her hand up to grasp his. "Don't worry, I'll find a way," she said softly, cognisant enough to notice the concern in his eyes.

He leaned his forehead against hers. "I sometimes feel like I'm flying a little blind here," he admitted.

She kissed him. "You're doing fine," she assured him. "More than fine. You're my strength, Danny. You didn't used to be, but you are now and there is nothing I cherish more. I want to be your strength too though. Don't think that you have to hold it all in. Let me be your shoulder to lean on like you are mine."

"I will," he assured her. "If the going gets tough then I promise you'll be the first place I'll turn," he said, not realising how prophetic those words would turn out to be.

"Make sure I am," she instructed, and then closed her eyes and brought her lips back to his…

_**To be continued…**_


	43. Memory Lane

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi! New chapter for you. Hope you enjoy. Please let me know what you think.

More Author's notes at the end, but for now, I'll leave you to read on and take a trip down 'Memory Lane' with our favourite couple...

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 43 – Memory Lane**_

_**The following week…**_

"Is she here yet, Mommy?" Lucy asked eagerly, her blue eyes wide with anticipation.

"Not yet, sweetie, no," Lindsay responded with a weary sigh.

Not for the first time in the past hour, she questioned the wisdom of bringing her daughter along with her today. It was almost inevitable that the plane would be delayed when she was stuck with an energetic four year old to entertain. Lucy had been so excited when Lindsay's sister had rung two days previously to say that she was flying into New York for a two-day medical conference however, that she hadn't the heart to say no when the little girl had asked to come with her to pick up her Aunt from the airport.

"To be honest I wasn't sure about taking Tania's spot at first," Mel had told Lindsay as she explained how her colleague had had to pull out of the conference due to a family emergency. "I have to give a paper and I hate that kind of thing – that's why she was the one who volunteered to go in the first place. Still, the hospital's research programme could do with the publicity and funding that attending the conference should generate - plus I get to see you and Lucy after missing you at Thanksgiving because we were with Paul's family this year - so I figured I could brave the awfulness of public speaking just this once."

Lindsay laughed. "Such enthusiasm," she commented dryly before turning her attention to more mundane matters. "Look Mel, I'd offer you a place to crash, but I'm still at Stella's and I think we've imposed on her hospitality enough already. I could ask Danny if we can stay at his place, I suppose. His apartment's got three bedrooms so there'd be enough space for us all - only thing is half my stuff from my old apartment is still stored in his spare bedroom so we'd need to do a little re-arranging first."

"There's no need for that," Mel told her. "The hospital is providing funds for a hotel room so I'm not short of a bed for the night."

"And neither are you by the sound of things," she added pointedly. "Four of us in three rooms means that someone would have to share, and I notice that you didn't mention the two of us bunking down together."

"No, I didn't, did I?" Lindsay responded airily.

Her sister tutted in mock disgust. "Well, if you're going to be all cryptic about it," she huffed.

Lindsay laughed. "I can't believe you haven't brought it up before now," she said.

"Well, what did you expect me to say – how's your sex life going, hon?"

Lindsay smiled. "It's not as if propriety has ever stopped you prying into such matters before now," she pointed out.

"No, I don't suppose it has," her sister agreed. There was a pregnant pause and then… "So how's your sex life going then, hon?"

"It's fine, thank-you," Lindsay responded with aplomb. "Great actually, seeing as you ask," she added for extra effect.

"And now you're just being smug," Mel complained. "Have some heart for us married-for-way-too-long girls, hey? We get laid maybe once a month - and that's only if we're lucky."

Lindsay laughed. "Mel, you had three kids at my last count."

"Yeah and…?"

"And I've seen the way you and Paul are with each other and there's no way those bed-sheets are even remotely cold."

"My husband is pretty hot," Mel conceded with a hint of pride in her tone.

"I guess we both got lucky, huh?" Lindsay said.

"You still believe that after everything that you and Danny been through in the past year?" her sister asked her.

"If I didn't, I wouldn't have stuck at it for so long, would I?" Lindsay answered. "If it's not right then there comes a point where you have to accept that it's over and move on with your life. I've never gotten anywhere near that point with Danny."

"Lindsay – you kicked him out and filed for divorce!"

"Only because I was scared – because I wrongly thought it was the only way to protect myself from getting hurt. Danny says we needed that break to realise what was really important and I suppose he's right in some respects. I still feel that it was a mistake for me to run away from our problems like that though. I put us all through a lot of unnecessary pain. If I'd just talked to him about the way I was feeling at the time…" She broke off with a regretful sigh.

"But the two of you are doing okay now though?" Mel enquired.

"Yeah, yeah, we're fine," Lindsay replied. "I mean we have our good days and our bad days like most couples, but the balance is definitely shifting more towards the good."

"Well I'm glad," Mel said. "I know Danny hasn't always been my favourite person in the world, but that's only because I didn't want you to get hurt again. It seemed as if history was repeating itself when the two of you first split and I guess I went into protective big sister mode because of that."

"He knows that," Lindsay assured her, "I think he better understands why now than he did when we saw you in the fall actually. I thought you two had sorted out your differences back then though?"

Mel laughed. "Is that what he told you?"

Lindsay's heart squeezed painfully inside her chest at that. "Are you saying he lied to me?" she demanded a little shakily.

"No, no," Mel hurriedly reassured her. "It was just that there wasn't really any negotiation involved. It was more along the lines of him telling me to butt out of your business, and me having no choice but to agree."

"You had a choice, Mel," Lindsay argued.

"I did, that's true," her sister acknowledged. "And I chose to give him the benefit of the doubt. He's proved himself worthy in the mean time, I guess."

Lindsay smiled at this rather grudging admittance. "You guess?"

"I need to see it for myself before he's one hundred percent off the hook," Mel informed her mulishly.

"Well, I'll let him know he's under evaluation," Lindsay said.

"No, you won't," Mel cut in sharply. "He'll be on his best behaviour if you do and that could lead to a false positive result."

Knowing her sister was only teasing, Lindsay laughed. "Mel!" she admonished.

Her sibling laughed too and then reluctantly brought their conversation to a close. "Look, I've got to go," she said. "I've got the boys' dinner to sort out. I'll see you in a couple of days though, yeah?"

"I'm looking forward to it," Lindsay replied softly. "I miss you, sis."

"I miss you too," Mel responded with a similar level of emotion before she cleared her throat and deliberately brightened her tone. "So give Lucy a big kiss from her favourite Aunt, okay? And take one for yourself while you're at it too."

"I'll do that," Lindsay assured her. "Bye Mel."

"Bye hon; I'll see you soon."

Soon was a relative word of course, Lindsay thought bleakly as the Arrivals board stubbornly refused to announce the landing of her sister's plane despite the 'Expected' time now being imminent. "How about we go and get ourselves a drink?" she suggested to her increasingly restless daughter.

"But what if we miss Auntie Mel?" Lucy asked with a worried frown.

"We'll be able to see the screen in the coffee shop," Lindsay promised her, "And she'll call us if we're not there at the gate when she arrives anyway."

"Okay then," Lucy agreed, suitably mollified by her mother's reassurances.

"You can draw her a picture while we wait if you want," Lindsay suggested as she took her daughter's hand and led her across the concourse towards a nearby café.

Luckily she'd had the foresight to pack a couple of colouring books, some crayons and several sheets of folded-up paper into her purse before she left that morning. Not so long ago, it would have been diapers and wipes that she'd never have left home without, but those essentials of motherhood had changed somewhat over the years as her baby had transformed from infant into the pre-schooler she now was.

Once Lucy was happily ensconced with her drawing materials and a beaker of milk, Lindsay leant back in her chair and sipped slowly at her latte as she watched the hustle and bustle of the busy airport around her. She was both nervous and excited about her sister's impending visit. Excited because their regular phone-calls and web chats never seemed to be enough - but nervous too because she knew that Mel would inevitably be assessing the state of her marriage and she didn't want her to find it wanting.

Even though she knew they must have had their ups-and-downs over the years, her sister and her brother-in-law Paul always seemed so happy together. It was as if nothing ever fazed them. They were a unit in a way that her and Danny only aspired to be. It was a lot to live up to, but she finally felt as if they were on the right track. Her face softened into a contented smile as she remembered the events of the day before…

_**The previous morning…**_

"What you grinning at?" Danny asked his wife as he negotiated the rush-hour traffic and cursed whoever had had the audacity to discover a dead body at such an inconvenient time in the morning.

"Nothing," she replied, continuing to bestow her sunny smile on him despite his ill temper.

"It's gotta be somethin'," he pressed.

"Can't I just be happy?" she asked him.

"Not without reason, no," he told her a touch grumpily.

She laughed a light silvery laugh at that, the sound a bubbling mountain stream over glacier-smooth rocks. "I've just missed this that's all," she explained.

"Missed what?"

"You and me," she replied, "Working together without a chaperone. Reminds me of the old days."

Danny laughed. "The old days? What are we? Sixty-five with one foot in the grave?"

Lindsay giggled. "No, I just mean that it's nice and relaxed between us like it used to be." She twisted in her seat to face him. "Remember that case with the football star?"

Her husband nodded. "Tyrell Mann, the superman," he drawled, his eyes still on the road ahead. "You quoted football statistics at me," he remembered with a faint smile.

"And you asked me to marry you," she reminded him.

"I believe I said I _might _ask you to marry me," Danny corrected pedantically, "Not quite the same thing, babe."

"Tom-ay-to, To-mah-to," Lindsay retorted. "So did you ever think you would?" she enquired.

"What? Marry you?" He shook his head with a wry laugh. "Not back then, no. I had other things on my mind."

"Like what?"

"You'd slap me if I told you."

Lindsay smiled. "So what case stands out for you from that time then?" she asked. "From those that we worked together, I mean."

"You'd slap me if I told you that too," Danny told her with a low chuckle.

She laughed. "Danny!"

He grinned. "I remember the opera dress."

"The opera dress?" she questioned with a puzzled frown.

"DB in the subway – the boss man in a goddamn monkey-suit, and the icing on the cake - Detective Lindsay Monroe in sexy heels and a deliciously low-cut dress if my memory serves me correctly."

"Danny!" she said, thumping him lightly on the upper arm.

"See - I told you you'd hit me," he told her unnecessarily.

She crossed her eyes at him. "_That's_ what you remember? Me in a skimpy dress and high heels?"

"That and you taking down that college student like a seasoned pro," he said, winking playfully at her, "_Both_ as sexy as hell from where I was standing."

'_Well hello, Miss Monroe,'_ he'd declared as she gingerly tottered down the tracks towards him and Mac. She remembered the tone of it had sent a shiver down her spine, but also that it had embarrassed her in front their boss who she'd not yet been completely comfortable around. Back then, her career had been her main concern and she'd felt as if she was still on probation. It was important that she kept on proving her professional worth so that no-one questioned why Mac had chosen to hire her.

"I don't know whether to be insulted or flattered," she told Danny now. "We were supposed to be professional work colleagues. I think you owed me more respect."

"Hey, I respected you," her husband protested. "Geez! I respected you to the point of torture."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she said as he changed lanes with a rather reckless twist of the wheel, causing the cabbie behind them to lean hard on his horn.

"Remember that pool game?" he asked her, ignoring the other road user's protest.

"The one that ended up with me naked as the day I was born?" Lindsay queried with a cheeky grin.

He shot her a mildly fulminating look, "No, the one that didn't - the Lab night out around ten months before."

She frowned as she tried to recall the particular night in question…

_**Several years earlier…**_

"_You're a goddamn hustler, Montana," a familiar voice murmured low in her ear._

"_Who me?" she asked innocently, bringing her hand to her chest and turning around to face him. Her breath caught in her throat as she did so. He was standing so close that she could see each individual bit of stubble on his chin. _

"_Yes you." His blue eyes bored into hers from behind the lenses of his glasses. He wasn't touching her but his presence vibrated through every nerve-ending in her body nonetheless. _

"_How about a real game?" he enquired, reaching around her to pick up a cue from the table behind. _

_She felt her heart stutter inside her chest as she caught a tantalising whiff of his cologne. 'Oh God, get it together, Monroe,' she silently admonished herself. _

"_You think you can take me?" she challenged brazenly once she'd gotten her wayward hormones back under some semblance of control._

_Something hot and reckless flashed into his eyes at that and she instinctively took a step backwards so that her butt collided with the edge of the pool table. It wasn't how she'd meant it, but the double entendre in her words was not lost on her – and apparently not on Danny either._

"_You don't want me to answer that," he told her gruffly. His eyes held hers for a moment longer before he deliberately turned away, moving to gather up the scattered pool balls in an attempt to cut through the electrically charged moment. _

"_Loser gets dumpster duty next case," he proclaimed after a rather tense pause._

"_I have to do that anyway," Lindsay protested with a pout, knowing that she was pushing her luck but feeling rather reckless all the same. Just how far would he go, she wondered._

"_That's what you get for being the new girl," he told her._

_She pursed her lips. "I've been in New York for nearly eleven months now," she reminded him._

_He lifted his shoulders with a nonchalant shrug. "You're still the newbie."_

"_And you're still an arrogant jerk," she shot back with a hint of bite in her tone._

_Danny laughed. "Now be nice, country girl, or I won't let you win."_

"_If you let me win, I'll kick your butt, city boy," she declared, pointing her cue at him for added emphasis. "I intend to beat you fair and square, wise-ass."_

"_Oo fighting talk," he teased. "But seeing as you're so confident, how about we up the stakes a little?"_

"_To what?"_

"_Loser buys the winner dinner."_

_Lindsay felt her stomach flip-flop. He'd talked her into dinner after he'd helped her with her roof-top experiment during the water-tower case a couple of months before too. Before then they'd only ever met for the occasional drink after work, or taken in a ball-game or two together. It was all very friendly, all very platonic – simply two colleagues who got on well sharing some downtime in each other's company, nothing more, nothing less. _

_Dinner had been a different story though – there had been an extra frisson there all evening, even if they had just gone for a burger rather than a formal meal. The conversation had veered away from their usual flirtatious banter and more towards 'getting to know you' territory. It had given her a deeper insight into the born and bred New Yorker that she worked with, made her even more intrigued by the man that she could no longer deny that she had the hots for in the most inconvenient way imaginable. _

_Getting involved with a work colleague was asking for trouble as far as Lindsay was concerned. What if their easy banter did not translate so well into a more romantic connection? What if it all went wrong and they had to continue to work together day after day? How would she handle that? How would he? It wasn't worth it. Her career was too important to her. She'd have to be content with just being his friend. She should turn down dinner, she really should…_

_Friends went for dinner though, didn't they? There was nothing wrong with two colleagues sharing a meal. It wasn't a date. It was the fulfilment of a bet. Loser's spoils; winner's reward... _

_Her eyes met his over the pool table and her bubble of denial popped in an instant. Oh Jesus, who was she kidding? It was a date, they both knew that. They just weren't ready to call it such yet. They were testing out the waters, feeling their way until they were both sure it was what they wanted. It made sense. Until they spoke the words out loud, they could step back; pretend they weren't on the brink of something more. Until they called it a date, they could kid themselves into believing that the only thing between them was mutual respect and friendship._

_She drew in a deep breath. "You're on," she declared. _

_He grinned, "All right so let's get this party started then." _

_He dug out a coin from his pocket. "Heads or tails?" he asked, balancing the small metallic disc on the tip of his thumb. _

"_Tails," she said, and then watched with bated breath as he flipped the coin and let it fall onto the table in front of him. _

_He leaned over to check the result. "Score one for me," he announced in a smug tone._

_As he moved around the table to take his break, Lindsay stepped aside to make room for him, but remained with her hip propped up against the edge of the table. _

"_How good's your concentration?" she asked as he lined up his shot._

"_Why? Are you planning on distracting me?"_

"_I was thinking about it," she responded coyly._

_He lifted his head to look at her, his expression suddenly serious. "I'm not sure we should be playing those kinds of games with each other," he quietly rebuked._

"_No," she agreed with a nod, her mood sobering a little. _

_He was right of course. They shouldn't be pushing the boundaries unless they were ready to accept the consequences. They couldn't deny their mutual competitive spirit however, so the banter was soon flying thick and fast as they circled each other like two wild animals staking out their prey. _

"_Best of three," she said after he'd emphatically won the first round._

_Danny let out a low wicked laugh. "Don't like to lose do ya, Montana?" _

"_That was just a warm-up," she told him defensively._

"_You wouldn't have said that if you'd won," he rejoined._

"_Well, you'll never know, will you?" she shot back before she proceeded to trounce him in the second game._

_The third and final battle was a close-fought contest, but, in the end, he edged ahead by the narrowest of margins, potting the last ball with a celebratory whoop and a delighted punch of the air. _

_She pouted and he grinned at her sulky expression. "You snooze, you lose," he taunted and she promptly stuck her tongue out at him._

_Danny laughed. "Come on, it's getting late," he said. "I'll walk you home."_

"_I can get a cab," she told him._

"_I know you can," he replied, tossing her light summer jacket at her, "But I'm still gonna walk you home."_

_Seeing as he clearly wasn't going to take no for an answer, she allowed him to do her the courtesy, even though the butterflies were fluttering madly in her stomach at the prospect. After bidding their colleagues a brief farewell, they headed out into the warm summer evening to walk the couple of miles from the bar to Lindsay's apartment block. Their conversation was relaxed as they strolled side-by-side through the city streets and Lindsay felt some of the tension inside her subside. Danny insisted on seeing her right to her door however, forcing her to make a decision about whether or not to invite him in. She vacillated about it for a while but eventually chose to do so._

_He hesitated as the atmosphere between them inexorably thickened. "Better not," he eventually decided with a wry twist of his lips. _

"_Why?" The question was out before she could bite her tongue._

_He moved closer, caging her against her apartment door with his palms flat against the wood. She felt his breath flutter over her lips as he lowered his head until their faces were only a couple of centimetres apart. "Because I wouldn't leave," he told her frankly._

_She couldn't tear her gaze from his. "Oh," she responded ineffectually._

_His lips curled up into a hint of a smile at her confusion. "'Oh' about covers it," he agreed and then sucked in a deep breath and forced himself to step back._

"_Soon, Montana," he called out over his shoulder as he headed off down the corridor away from her. "Very soon…"_

Dinner that time had ended up as take-out pizza at the Lab because they'd both been forced to work unexpected overtime at the last minute. He'd officially asked her out after the Holly's case a few weeks later though, but of course they'd never gotten that promised first date. A blast from the past had derailed things before they'd even begun and it had taken another few months before they were finally ready to cross that line again.

Lindsay shifted in her seat and let out a small sigh. "I remember," she said.

"I wanted you that night," Danny told her candidly.

"I wouldn't have said no if you'd made a move," she admitted.

Fuelled by a little too much alcohol and a sudden heightened awareness of him, she more than likely would have slept with him - and just as likely regretted it in the morning too. To have taken that leap on a whim rather than making a considered decision about it wouldn't have sat too well with her – however right the man in question had eventually turned out to be.

"Just as well I managed to keep my willpower in check then," Danny said, knowing her too well not to realise this.

She smiled at him. "You were a true gentleman," she concurred.

He laughed. "Well, I don't know about that!" he quipped. "You have no idea the thoughts that were running through my head as I walked home that night."

She giggled. "Do you think things would have been different if we had gotten together that night?" she asked him.

He shrugged. "I don't know, babe - maybe, maybe not. We'd have been a lot further on in our relationship when Ruben was killed but…" He sighed. "I'm not sure we were really ready to be together at that point. Those extra few months of waiting were somehow strangely necessary for us too."

Lindsay nodded. "I think I needed to face Daniel Kadem's trial alone," she considered. "You being there for me at the end of it – it meant so much, but I… I don't know… I guess I needed to prove to myself that I had the strength to confront my past before I could get involved with you. I didn't manage to completely come to terms with everything, but I made enough of a break to allow myself to open up my heart to love again."

"I couldn't stop thinking of you those weeks you were in Montana, you know," Danny confessed. "If anything convinced me that my attraction to you was something that I could no longer ignore, it was that. I was actually kind of relieved when you said you weren't ready for a relationship after you stood me up that time. I mean I was disappointed at first, but I did start to think perhaps it was for the best. And then you upped and left and everything got turned on its head again."

"I suppose everything happens for a reason," Lindsay mused thoughtfully as they finally arrived at the crime scene and pulled into an available parking spot.

Danny nodded. "It's a cliché I know," he said as he shut off the engine and unbuckled his seatbelt, "But true all the same even so."

Leaning over the gear-stick, he unclipped her seatbelt for her. "I missed this too, you know," he told her. "Us working together, I mean. I guess Mac figured we could handle it again now."

"He wanted you to baby-sit me more like," Lindsay returned acidly. "I don't suppose it's a coincidence that ever since he agreed I could go back out into the field, I've either worked with you or him, is it?"

"He cares about you, Linds," Danny told her. "He just wants to make sure you have the appropriate support that's all."

"Which means it isn't a coincidence then?" she pressed.

Danny didn't confirm or deny. "He could have confined you to the Lab until you were completely off your medication," he reminded her. "Be thankful that he chose not to."

"So I should put up or shut up, is that it?"

"I think you should be grateful that he has that much trust in you," her husband chastised her.

Lindsay sighed. "I know and I am - it's just frustrating that's all."

"You said you liked working with me a few minutes ago," he pointed out.

"I do."

"So what's the problem then?" he asked, lifting his eyebrows at her.

She shook her head with a laugh and then reached out to touch his grizzled cheek. "No problem," she said lightly, "None whatsoever."

"Good," he said, leaning in to place a warm kiss on her bowed lips.

"Danny! We're on the clock!" she half-heartedly protested.

"So?" he said, unconcerned. "No-one's looking." He kissed her again for good measure and then determinedly climbed out of the car.

With a wry shake of her head, she followed his lead, grabbing her kit from the trunk of the car before ducking under the crime tape that he solicitously held aloft for her. For the rest of the day, they kept their interactions on a strictly professional level, only reverting back to their husband and wife personas when they left the Lab behind at the end of their shifts many hours later.

_**Back in the present…**_

Lindsay startled as her cell phone rang in her coat pocket. "Well, it's about time!" she greeted her sister without any preamble.

"I know, I'm sorry," Mel apologised, sounding a little harassed. "I should be through in around ten minutes or so. I've just got to pick up my bags."

"Just how many do you need for four days?" Lindsay asked her.

"Linds - it's New York," her sister reminded her. "I need luggage to carry home all the shopping."

Lindsay laughed. "I thought you came here to work," she said.

"For two days, yes," Mel replied. "But the rest of today plus Friday is one hundred percent Me-time. Have you any idea how long it's been since I've had more than a couple of days without my boys to think of?"

"The week you and Paul went on a second honeymoon last year," Lindsay answered.

"Well yeah," Mel admitted, "But that was different. As much as I love and adore him, you couldn't call my husband the ideal shopping companion. He gets bored within half an hour."

"Right and me and your four-year old niece are so much better?"

"Can't you dump her with a babysitter?" her sister enquired plaintively.

"Mel!"

Mel laughed. "Only kidding," she said. "I can't wait to see that sweet little face again."

"That's good because she's worked herself up into a frenzy of excitement over your visit."

"Well, I _am_ her favourite Aunt."

"Mel, you're her only Aunt," Lindsay told her dryly. "You're bound to come out on top in a field of one."

"Such a high opinion you have of me," Mel said in mock indignation. "Oo, I think that's my luggage," she announced. "I'll see you and Lucy-Lu at the gate," she finished and then promptly hung up.

A few minutes later, Lindsay waited her turn while Lucy launched herself at her Aunt with a squeal of delight. "Auntie Mel, you're here!"

"Hello baby girl," Mel crooned as she knelt to embrace her beaming niece. "You know - I think you get prettier every time I see you."

"Daddy says I got good genes," Lucy informed her importantly.

Mel laughed. "Oh does he now? And would those be Monroe genes or Messer ones, huh?"

"Both," Lucy said. "I got the good bits of Mommy and the good bits of Daddy."

"Not to mention the modesty of Daddy too," Lindsay quipped as she moved to hug her sister hello.

"I drawed you a picture, Auntie Mel," Lucy said when the two siblings reluctantly drew apart a few moments later. "It's you and me in Noo York."

She held out her offering and her Aunt accepted it with a smile. "I can see that," she said. "And who's this?" she asked, pointing to the other two stick figures in the drawing.

"That's Mommy and Daddy," Lucy told her as if it was obvious. "They holding hands, see?"

"Mommy and Daddy hold hands a lot, do they?"

Lucy nodded, her blonde curls bouncing. "They do lots of kissing too," she said. "Big, sloppy ones."

"Big sloppy ones, huh?" Mel said, raising her eyebrows at her younger sister.

"Oh God!" Lindsay murmured under her breath, her cheeks reddening in embarrassment.

"Daddy kisses Mommy more than he kissed Rachel when she was his girlfriend," Lucy went on. "I fink that's cus he loves Mommy best."

"Hmm, I think Daddy's rising more and more in my estimation with every minute that goes by," Mel mused with a sly, sidelong glance at her sister.

Lindsay smiled, a warm glow filling her from the inside out. Lucy's observations may be simplistic, but she had a child's uncanny ability to cut through all the layers and see right to the heart of things. Despite Danny's assurances that it was her he wanted, in Lindsay's mind she wouldn't ever measure up to the stunning Rachel's lofty heights. That didn't mean that she didn't feel as if she was enough for him, more that he might sometimes wonder whether the grass would have been greener if he'd made a different choice.

According to her daughter however, Danny loved her best and there couldn't be any higher endorsement than that, could there?

"I love you," she told him as he slipped into bed beside her later that night. He'd let himself into Stella's apartment with the key that she'd given him a couple of weeks before.

"I love you too," he said, kissing her hair as she snuggled up against him. "Your sister arrive, okay?"

"Uh-huh," Lindsay murmured a little drowsily. "She said to tell you that she was sorry that she missed you."

Danny chuckled. "I'll bet," he said.

Lindsay smiled as she nuzzled her face into the hollow of his throat. "She loves you really," she assured him.

"Mmm," he responded noncommittally.

Lindsay dug him in the ribs and he laughed softly. "I'll take your word for it."

Lindsay lifted her face to brush her lips against his. "I wasn't expecting you tonight," she said as their mouths parted.

"I didn't want to go home to a cold bed," he said by way of explanation. "It's several degrees below out."

"So what? I'm a convenient electric blanket, huh?"

"You do keep the bed all warm and toasty, yeah," he told her irreverently.

"Did you want to sleep on the sofa?" she asked him in a flat tone.

He laughed and then dipped his head to kiss her more thoroughly.

"Your hands are cold," she protested a little breathlessly when they finally came up for air.

"So warm me up," he suggested as his mouth closed insistently over hers again, his tongue parting her lips and seeking out hers with growing fervour.

Helpless to resist, Lindsay arched her body into his and allowed herself to be pulled down into the waiting abyss…

_**To be continued…**_

_P.S. I've not forgotten my foreshadowing at the end of last chapter by the way. It was supposed to come to fruition at the end of this part, but things went off on an unexpected tangent. The scene with Danny and Lindsay reminiscing in the car ended up much longer than I expected, and the flashback within the flashback wasn't even part of the original outline for this chapter at all. I guess we'll have to leave it at that until next time around therefore… ;-)_


	44. Sisters In Arms

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hey! New chapter for you!

My muse has been working overtime the past couple of weeks so this part has come together relatively quickly. It's the exception rather than the rule though so don't get too used to it! LOL!

Hope you enjoy x

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 44 – Sisters in Arms**_

_**Three days later…**_

"Okay - let's shop until we drop!" Mel said, tucking her arm into her sister's as they headed up the steps out of the subway station.

Lindsay laughed. "You're obsessed!" she said as she quickened her pace to keep up with her elder sibling's longer strides.

"I watched too much Sex and the City when I was younger, you mean," Mel told her self-deprecatingly. "I want… no, _need_ Carrie Bradshaw's shoe collection so point me in the right direction."

"Which of course will be just the thing for mucking out the horses at the ranch," Lindsay quipped with a grin.

Mel frowned at her in mock censure. "I can dream, can't I?" she said, and then let out a rather dramatic sigh. "It's just my luck that I gave birth to a trio of boys, isn't it?" she lamented. "I can't even share my dream with a like-minded daughter back home. You wanna trade one of my delicious monsters for your little sweetheart maybe?"

"If you're thinking she's an easy prospect then think again," Lindsay told her sister darkly. "She's her Daddy's girl through and through that one, and those Messer genes have the potential to cause a whole lot of trouble, believe me."

Mel laughed. "So how did you persuade her that she didn't want to come along with us today?" she asked.

"Bribery, pure and simple," Lindsay answered in a matter-of-fact tone. "She gets to spend the whole day with her Daddy doing whatever she wants - which of course was too good of an opportunity for her to miss. I hope you're grateful for the sacrifice he's making on your behalf therefore. He's even promised to take her up the Empire State Building, something that he's resisted valiantly up until now."

"What's wrong with the Empire State Building?" Mel asked, not getting why this was such a problem. "Danny's from New York, isn't he? You'd think he'd want to celebrate one of his home city's most famous landmarks."

"I think the clue is in the 'most famous' part of that last statement," Lindsay explained. "Just because he accepts the tourists doesn't mean he wants to be one. Queuing up with the masses is not his idea of a fun, believe me. And he's taking her ice-skating too – although he didn't seem too bothered about that part of the day's agenda."

"Ice-skating? Really?" Mel said, her eyes lighting up with childish enthusiasm, "At the Rockefeller Centre, you mean? Oo – I've always wanted to do that. Can we go too?"

Lindsay lifted her eyebrows. "Seriously?" she asked.

"Seriously," Mel confirmed with an excited nod. "Come on," she said, squeezing her sister's arm in encouragement, "Indulge your big sister in one of her childhood fantasies, hey?"

"I thought you wanted today to be just the two of us?" Lindsay said a little plaintively.

"I do, but that doesn't mean we can't meet up with Danny and Lucy later on, does it?" Mel said.

"I suppose not," Lindsay concurred before finally giving into her sister's pleas.

Retrieving her cell phone from her purse, she called her husband to make the necessary arrangements. "He'll meet us at two-thirty," she informed Mel as she hung up.

"Cool!" her sister said, clapping her hands and sounding so like Lucy that there was no doubt in Lindsay's mind that the two of them had come from the same gene pool.

She rolled her eyes and Mel grinned. "So does Danny know how to ice-skate?" she enquired conversationally as they continued on their way down the sidewalk.

Lindsay shrugged. "I'm not sure to be honest. He didn't object to taking Lucy along today so I assume so."

"You mean he's never taken you out on a romantic winter date which has ended up with the two of you skating hand-in-hand around a deserted ice-rink?" Mel teased. She pursed her lips. "What's the point of being married to a New Yorker then?"

Lindsay laughed. "Mel, you watch way too many movies in your spare time," she said dryly. "Get off the sofa and get a life, why don't ya?"

"I have a life," Mel returned in an affronted tone. "Just because I have a thing for movie-land New York doesn't mean I'm lacking in imagination."

"Well, I hate to burst your pretty little bubble, but Danny doesn't do that kind of romantic."

"So what kind of romantic does he do then?" Mel asked her.

Lindsay shot her sister a critical look. "I don't need big gestures to keep me happy, Mel," she said. "That's not who I am."

"No, but every woman needs a little romance in her life sometimes," Mel replied. "Doesn't he ever buy you flowers? Chocolates even?"

"He got me a daisy once," Lindsay said fondly. "And after we moved into our new apartment when Lucy was a couple months old, he often used to go several stops out of his way to pick up these pastries I liked from a bakery near where we used to live."

"Well, I'm positively swooning here," Mel said, a touch of sarcasm colouring her tone.

"Danny might not be traditionally romantic, but I _like_ that," Lindsay argued back. "Simon used to buy me a bunch of roses every couple of weeks but it didn't mean a thing. He was just going through the motions for the sake of it, but apparently I was supposed to be grateful for that."

"Well, he was anything but the perfect boyfriend, I'll give you that," Mel said with feeling.

"So stop criticising my infinitely superior husband then."

"I wasn't!" Mel protested. "I just know that marriage can get a bit monotonous sometimes if you don't make the effort to inject a little romance into the proceedings."

"Your definition of romance and mine are very different though, Mel," Lindsay pointed out. "You get a kick out of indulging in your movie-inspired fantasy world, but me? I guess I appreciate the simpler things in life. I suppose that's because my innocence was stolen from me when I was only fifteen. When you're forced to witness the kind of brutal slaughter that I did, it changes who you are inside forever."

She sighed. "All I know is that when Danny goes out to get me some food without even asking because he knows that I'm hungry, or leaves me a 'Love you, see you later' note on the bathroom mirror because he's on the early shift and doesn't want to wake me up… Or takes our daughter on a trip up the Empire State Building just so that I can spend some time alone with my sister… Well, when he does that, I know I'm the luckiest girl in the world."

There was a noticeable silence in response to this declaration, and when Lindsay glanced over at her sister to see why, she caught her wiping away a tear. "Are you crying?"

Mel sniffed. "I'm just so glad that you've finally found someone who makes you happy," she said. "It's all I've ever wanted for you. It's all any of us have ever wanted for you."

"You didn't think that Danny made me happy?" Lindsay asked with a frown.

"I wasn't certain whether you were just settling if you want to know the truth," Mel told her candidly. "Look, don't get me wrong, I know that you love Danny and that he loves you, but I have wondered whether it had just become habit for the two of you. Clearly that's not the case, there's obviously more holding you together than that."

Lindsay smiled. "There is, but if I'm honest, it's only now that we truly appreciate what that is. The counselling has helped us with that, I think, plus the fact that we talk to each other a lot more nowadays… We're just so much more in tune than we used to be. Lucy used to make up most of the glue that held us together, but now she's only a very small part of it. We're the couple that we might have been if I hadn't gotten accidentally pregnant," she concluded, taking care not to divulge any specifics about why her relationship with Danny had been so rocky at the time.

Her family still didn't know about his infidelity and she was determined that it would remain that way. Whatever troubles they'd experienced since then, they were both equally responsible for them. The one-sidedness of the situation had ended the moment she'd agreed to take him back. Telling her family the truth now would only complicate the situation, and as far as she was concerned, what they didn't know would never hurt them anyway.

"You think your pregnancy drove a wedge between the two of you?" Mel asked then.

Lindsay shook her head. "No, I think my pregnancy forced us into a commitment before we were truly ready for it," she said. "It kind of fast-forwarded everything between us. If we'd been able to do things at our own pace then maybe we might have handled the tough times a little better."

"But you don't regret having Lucy surely?"

"Of course not – that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that things might have turned out a little differently if we hadn't had to deal with becoming parents so unexpectedly."

"Hmm," Mel said, nodding her head slowly as she absorbed this.

"So has that set your mind at rest?" Lindsay asked after a moment.

Her sister threw her a wry smile. "Am I that transparent?"

"Yes," Lindsay told her bluntly. "So?" she demanded after another pause.

"It's gone some way to it, yes," Mel eventually admitted.

"So you can report good things back to the PTB on your return then," Lindsay said in a decided tone. "And don't even think about pretending you're not a Monroe family spy," she added before her sister could protest her innocence.

Mel laughed. "So suspicious!" she remarked before her expression sobered again. "I think Mom and Dad were a bit concerned that Danny didn't come with you at Thanksgiving," she explained.

"But I told them why he didn't!" Lindsay said, throwing her hands up in exasperation.

"I know and they believed you for the most part," Mel said. "I think there was still some niggling doubt there though."

"Well, tell them they've no need to worry. Danny and I are stronger than we've ever been. I feel like we're finally getting it right at long last."

Mel nodded. "You do seem much more confident in your relationship with him," she agreed.

"So stop fussing then."

"Sorry – never gonna do that," Mel told her unrepentantly. "It a big sister's prerogative."

"But enough of that," she went on before Lindsay could contradict this irrefutable fact. "It's time to get down to serious business. We can hit Bloomingdales and Barneys for my own personal benefit later, but firstly, you'd better point me in the direction of somewhere I can get something reasonably priced for the boys - because if I go home empty-handed my life will not be worth living, believe me!"

**OOOOOO**

_**Several hours later…**_

"Mel, we've gotta meet Danny in forty-five minutes!" Lindsay protested as her sister dragged her towards the elevators like a women possessed.

"I know," Mel said. "Just one last stop, I promise – I still need to get a present for Paul."

Lindsay giggled when she realised where her sister was headed. "Something tells me your motives aren't completely altruistic here," she said as they entered the store's well-stocked lingerie department.

"No," Mel freely admitted as she started to rifle through the racks, "It's definitely for the mutual benefit of both of us…"

"And our expanding family too, I hope," she added with exaggerated casualness.

Lindsay's eyes widened at the seemingly throwaway remark. "You're trying for another baby?" she enquired, instinctively sensing that her sister had an underlying reason for bringing the subject up.

Mel shrugged. "We've been thinking about it. We love our boys more than life itself, but we have this yearning for a daughter too. We know there's no guarantee, but we want to give it one last try."

"And if you have another boy?"

"Then we'll be grateful for what God has given us and accept that our family is complete," Mel said firmly before she glanced over at her sister with reflective eyes.

"I can't say that I wouldn't be a little disappointed though," she confessed, "I think that's why it's been such a huge decision for us."

"You're worried that you won't feel the same as you did when you had the boys?"

Mel nodded. "And I couldn't live with myself if that were the case," she said. "I can't ever imagine not loving my child though. I think when I hold him or her in my arms for the first time, the only thing that will truly matter to me is whether they're healthy or not. Their sex will be largely immaterial at that point."

She heaved an apprehensive sigh. "Tell me I'm not crazy though, Linds," she urged. "Tell me I'm not just kidding myself on that."

"Me and Danny want another baby when the time is right for us too," Lindsay told her after a beat. "What if we were both pregnant at the same time – what if I had another girl and you had another boy – would you swap if I gave you the opportunity to?"

"You would never give up your own child, Lindsay," Mel objected.

"No," Lindsay agreed with an incline of her head, "But that's not what's under debate here. The question is - would _you_ give up your fourth son to gain yourself a daughter?"

Mel shook her head. "No, no, I wouldn't."

"But my baby's a girl – just what you've dreamed of."

"But my baby'd be mine," Mel said fiercely, "And there's no way I'd let you have him."

Lindsay smiled at her sister's mother-bear attitude towards a child that didn't even exist yet. "Exactly," she said and then reached out to give her sibling a reassuring hug.

"I really don't think you have anything to worry about, Mel," she said as they drew apart. "So you might be a little disappointed initially if it's another boy, but so what? In the end, he'd be yours and no other child would do."

Mel nodded. "I know you're right, but I can't help feeling apprehensive about it all the same. I wasn't bothered either way when I was pregnant before, but this time I'll definitely have a preference and that scares me."

"You know what a wise woman once told me when I was in labour and freaking out about whether I had it in me to be a good Mom?" Lindsay said.

"No what?"

"She said that the fact that I'd thought about it so much meant that I would do just fine," Lindsay replied. "I'm not sure I believed her at the time, but she was right. You're worried because you want to give your child your whole heart and can't bear the thought of not doing so. The mere fact that it bothers you that much means that when push comes to shove - 'scuse the pun - you'll be the mother you want to be because you can't be anything else."

Mel nodded. "I think I want to meet this wise woman of yours."

Lindsay smiled. "You already did – last night and again this morning."

"Stella, huh?"

"Stella," Lindsay confirmed with a nod. "She was a godsend really. Danny was pretty hyped-up when he first arrived at the hospital. I needed him there, but he wasn't exactly a calming influence to begin with. Stella helped me to focus while he sorted his head out. Of course once he'd gotten rid of all the nervous energy, he was the perfect birthing partner. I could never have gotten through it without him."

Mel nodded. "I know what you mean. Paul was my rock too."

"So how about this?" Lindsay asked, holding up a rose-pink negligee that she knew would appeal.

"Mmm," Mel considered, tapping her forefinger contemplatively against her lips. "Sexy but sophisticated – I think that'll be just the thing to inspire a little baby-making, don't you?"

"I do," Lindsay concurred. "So hurry up and try it on will you? If we're late, there'll be hell to pay."

"I never knew Danny was such a stickler for punctuality," Mel said as they headed for the changing rooms.

"He isn't, Lucy is," Lindsay replied, "And she won't be impressed if we show up late."

Mel laughed. "No way - she's a little cutie-pie – butter wouldn't melt."

"Appearances can be deceiving, believe me," her sister told her.

In the end, they made it with a couple of minutes to spare so thankfully avoided the youngest Messer's wrath.

"Whoa! Did you purchase the whole of Manhattan?" Danny exclaimed as he took in the mountain of shopping bags that they were carrying between them.

"Mel did," Lindsay said as she leaned in to kiss him hello. She flashed him a mischievous grin. "So did you have a good time?" she enquired.

He made a face at her. "I survived."

"We went up in a big el-vator, Mommy," Lucy told her excitedly. "And when we got to the top I could see all the way to Nonna's house! It was _so _cool!"

Lindsay smiled. "I bet it was – and what's this, huh?" she said, tapping the brim of the 'I 'heart' NY' baseball cap that the little girl was wearing.

"Daddy got it me. I said please."

"Repeatedly," Danny put in sardonically.

"And Mr Soft-Touch gave in, huh?" his wife guessed.

He shrugged. "You Monroe women have that effect on me."

"Interesting," Mel remarked, tongue in cheek, "Seems I could use that to my advantage."

She winked at him and he shook his head with a resigned sigh. "So – did you want to go ice-skating or what?" he demanded impatiently.

"Lead on, most esteemed brother-in-law," Mel quipped, bending over at the waist and waving him ahead of her like he was her proverbial Lord and Master.

Danny rolled his eyes skyward. "God, give me strength," he muttered fervently under his breath as they went to join the queue.

Half an hour later, Mel joined him at the barrier, sending up a spray of ice-dust with her toe-pick as she brought herself to an expert spot. "Phew! I think I'm a bit out of practise," she remarked a little breathlessly.

Lowering his cell phone, Danny raised his eyebrows at her. "You fishin' for a compliment?" he asked.

Mel frowned. "You're as suspicious of my motives as my sister is," she complained.

"Maybe we have reason," he told her with an impudent grin.

"If you were hoping to get back on my good side then you're going the wrong way about it," she informed him loftily.

He chuckled and she laughed along with him. "Let me see," she said, holding out her hand for his cell phone.

He obediently showed her the pictures he'd taken of Lindsay leading a beaming, if rather unsteady Lucy around the ice.

"She looks happy," Mel commented as she scrolled through the photos.

"She's not stopped hassling us about coming again since we brought her at Christmas," Danny said.

Mel shot him a contemplative glance. "I didn't mean Lucy," she said meaningfully.

"Oh," he said, a little discomforted by the turn their conversation had taken. He knew he was under evaluation at the moment. Lindsay's family were used to taking care of her themselves when she was ill, but this time around they'd had to trust him to do it instead.

"She still has her bad days," he went on, "But she definitely seems to be on the mend – or at least it seems that way to me anyway."

"It seems that way to me too," Mel assured him. "She's strong, you know? She always seems to manage to find the necessary strength to fight back, but it's different this time somehow. It's hard to explain exactly, but it's like a permanent weight has finally lifted for her."

Danny ran his hand through his hair, spiking it in all directions. "She was holding so much inside, it must have been a strain on her," he said. "Now it's all out in the open, she no longer has to worry about how I might react. There's security in that for her, I guess. I think she spent a lot of time worrying about getting ill again because she wasn't sure how I'd handle it. Now she knows I intend to stick around no matter what, she can relax a bit."

Mel nodded. "Lindsay told me that you joined a support group," she prompted.

"Umm yeah," Danny replied, rubbing the back of his neck. "I wasn't sure about it at first, but it has helped, I've got to admit. Now that I properly understand where her anxieties come from, it's much easier for me to deal with them. I'm able to be more objective about things, take a step back if she's going off the deep-end. I used to feed into her insecurities without even realising it and that just made things worse."

"It's good that you recognise that," Mel said. "I know it's not always easy, knowing what to do for the best, but you seem to be finding the right balance. The fact that my sister is getting healthy again is testament to that."

"Wow! Was that a compliment?" Danny asked, wide-eyed with wonder.

Mel laughed and punched him good-naturedly on the upper arm. "You need to come to Montana for a visit soon," she said.

He shot her a quizzical look. "Why?"

"Because Mom and Dad need to see the two of you together," Mel explained. "When Lindsay visited them at Thanksgiving, it was clear that she was getting better, but I think they were still a bit worried about how things were going between the two of you. It's been nearly five months since you decided to give things another go and…"

"And they think if everything was going as well as we claim then we should be back living under the same roof by now, huh?" Danny cut in.

Mel shrugged. "Pretty much, yeah."

He sighed. "It's a familiar refrain at the moment," he said. "Everyone but us seems to be of the same opinion. It's only in the last couple of months that things have really started to come together for us though. We're still in couple's counselling - even if we do only go every other week now. We want to be absolutely sure that we're in the right place before we take that next step though, so if we're being a little overcautious that's just the way it has to be."

"Well, you've convinced me," Mel told him. "Lindsay may not have said it outright, but it's clear that she's happy with the way things are progressing between the two of you. If she felt things were moving too slowly, I'm sure she would have said something to me. All I've been hearing is how wonderful you are though," she finished with a twinkle.

Danny laughed. "And now you're exaggerating," he said.

Mel grinned. "Maybe a little bit," she admitted, "But not completely. She seems more in love with you now than she's ever been."

"Well, the feeling's mutual," Danny told her before his face broke into a ready smile at the timely approach of his wife and daughter.

"Daddy! Auntie Mel! Look! Look! I doin' it… I doin' it all by myself…" Lucy cried as she skated towards them, her arms wind-milling wildly in order to keep her precarious balance. Lindsay followed closely in her wake; ready to spring into action should she lose her footing and fall.

"Whoa! Careful there, speedy," Danny said as his daughter crashed unceremoniously into his legs having not quite learned the art of stopping yet.

He reached down a hand to steady her before she fell backwards onto her butt and then took a moment to delight in the stream of childish giggles that left her throat. "I forgot to stop," she told him over convulsions of laughter. "I went smash into Daddy!"

He laughed at her over-the-top amusement. "I guess we'd better teach you how to stop then, short stuff huh?" he said, reaching down to tweak her little button nose.

She nodded in agreement and then looked over at her Aunt. "Did you see me skating Auntie Mel?"

"I did," she said solemnly.

"I not as good as you though," Lucy said with vast understatement.

Lindsay laughed as Danny reached out to draw her against his side. "Your Auntie Mel used to win competitions," she informed her daughter.

"Really?" Lucy asked, wide-eyed. "Did you win trophies and medals?"

"A few," Mel replied vaguely and then held out her hand to her niece in invitation. "How about I teach you some of the cool moves I know?" she said.

"Okay," Lucy agreed, willingly going along with this suggestion.

"She was good, huh?" Danny said to Lindsay after the two of them had skated away.

His wife nodded. "She could have made a career out of it – her coach wanted her to – but Mel always wanted to be a doctor. She loved skating, but it was her hobby more than her vocation." She smiled up at him. "So, did you survive the third degree?" she asked him.

"Yeah, no thanks to you."

"You deal with hardened criminals every day. You can't survive a little questioning from my sister without me being there to hold your hand?"

"Hardened criminals are a breeze compared to your sister," Danny told her sardonically. "She's got formidable down to a fine art."

Lindsay giggled. "She needed to reassure herself," she said in a more serious tone.

Danny nodded solemnly. "I know." He took her upturned face in his gloved hands and kissed her before pushing himself away from the barrier. "I thought we came here to skate," he said.

"I don't know about Mel being a champion, you're not so bad yourself," Lindsay said as he turned to skate backwards in front of her a couple of minutes later.

"I used to drive a Zamboni for a little extra cash," he explained, "Had free rein of the rink after hours."

"Well, you learn something new everyday," Lindsay commented lightly.

He grinned at her. "I'm a never-ending book," he told her with aplomb.

"Yeah and modest with it too," she shot back sarcastically.

He laughed and then reversed his position, reaching out to take hold of her hand as he did so. "You love me," he said.

She squeezed his fingers. "It seems that way, yeah."

"You could sound a little more pleased about it!" he accused.

She laughed at his indignation. "Babe, I'm ecstatic, can't you tell?" she quipped.

Her husband's response to that particular pronouncement of course, was predictably unprintable…

**OOOOOO**

Monday morning, two days later, Lindsay hurried down the corridor towards the Lab's mini-conference room on her way to the weekly debrief. She paused as she passed the glass-fronted office space however, seeing that Danny was still sitting at his desk.

"Hey!" she said, tapping on the glass panel and poking her head around the door-frame. "You've not forgotten the meeting have you?"

He shook his head. "No, no – I've just got to finish this first," he said, indicating something on his computer screen. "I'll be along in a minute. You go ahead."

"Okay then," Lindsay said. "Don't be late."

"Like you usually are, you mean?" he teased.

She made a face at him. "I made it with ten minutes to spare this morning," she defended.

More often than not, she dashed in at the last minute. On every other morning, she started work half an hour later so that she had enough time to drop Lucy off at pre-school first. On Monday's though, Mac insisted that she attended the weekly staff meeting so she wasn't afforded the same luxury. Not wanting to forgo taking her little girl to pre-school, she tried to cram in both activities, making getting to work on time a race against the clock – a race that she invariably lost. As she was rarely more than five to ten minutes late however, Mac tended to overlook her tardiness, a fact for which she was immensely grateful.

Danny grinned. "Give the woman a gold star," he quipped, just as his desk phone began to ring. Turning away from her, he lifted the receiver to his ear, "Detective Messer," he announced in his official voice.

Leaving her husband to it, Lindsay continued on her way to the conference room where her colleagues were already gathering.

"Hey!" Sheldon said, greeting her with a warm smile. "How are you? I've not seen you since last Tuesday."

"I'm good," Lindsay told him.

"Danny said your sister was here for a visit?"

Lindsay nodded. "Yeah," she said, her expression softening. "It was good to spend some time with her. It's hard being so far away sometimes."

Sheldon nodded in understanding. "Multi-media's all well and good, but it's not the same as the personal touch, is it?"

Lindsay shook her head. "No," she agreed. "We try to visit in person as often as we can, but it's still difficult. Mel has always been my rock, my best friend so it was hard to say goodbye to her on Saturday – four days just isn't long enough. And then there's my Mom of course…" she trailed off with a resigned shrug.

"They're ain't no substitute for a mother's love, huh?" Hawkes finished for her.

"No, there isn't," Lindsay concurred. "I miss her a lot, especially now that I'm a Mom too. I hope Lucy feels the same way about me when she grows up."

"With a mother like you, I'm sure that's a given," Sheldon told her, making her flush with pleasure.

She always strived to be the very best mother she could, so it was nice to have someone acknowledge that she was doing a good job of it. She often felt like a fish out of water not knowing whether her mothering instincts were true or not. When she looked at her gorgeous little girl though, she figured she had to be doing something right.

Although unquestionably a handful, Lucy was a happy, healthy and generally well-behaved child. Everybody adored her. She had such sweet, cheeky charm that she could captivate her audience without even seeming to try. Lindsay looked at her some days and saw nothing but Danny shining through those familiar blue eyes, but every-so-often she spied traits of her own personality breaking through too.

The amalgamation of the two of them had produced something that was uniquely Lucy Messer however. Their daughter was so much more than the sum of two parts. She was her own little person, an individual in her own right. Lindsay's heart swelled with pride and love as she thought about the woman that her little girl would turn out to be one day. She was determined that they would remain close, in spite of how many miles might lie between them once Lucy had broken free of her childhood cocoon and learned to spread her adult wings. If Lindsay and her Mom could maintain a close bond with so much physical distance between them, then surely she could do the same with own daughter too?

"I bet Lucy enjoyed having her Aunt around, huh?" Sheldon said, bringing Lindsay's attention back to the conversation at hand.

She smiled. "I thought she was going to internally combust at one point," she joked.

She drew her cell phone from her pocket and showed her colleague the pictures that she'd snapped of Mel and Lucy together. Usually when they saw each other, it was at large family gatherings, which meant that there wasn't much time for the kind of one-on-one interaction that the two of them had enjoyed the previous week. Mel always made a point of spending some time with Lucy when they were in Montana, but it was still very limited.

Lindsay had been thrilled to see the close bond that had developed between them over the few short days of Mel's visit because she felt that Lucy sometimes missed out on extended family life. Danny's parents were great of course, and some of his cousin's had kids so she was a de-facto niece and cousin in that respect. But Mel, her brothers and their children were the real deal and, sadly, Lucy was only a peripheral part of that.

It was another reason that Lindsay wanted her and Danny to have another child. She had three siblings of her own and she couldn't imagine life without any of them. Danny missed his brother keenly too, despite the two of them not always being as close as he might have liked. Louie had shut his younger brother out for a reason though – a reason that had everything to do with love. It showed Lindsay that the brother-in-law that she'd never gotten to meet had been a good person at heart, despite his many mistakes. He'd wanted a better life for his sibling and had sacrificed a lot so that he could achieve it. There was no greater love than that as far as Lindsay was concerned.

"Okay, everyone sit down," Mac said curtly as he strode purposefully into the room several minutes later.

He glanced around the gathered throng as everyone obediently scrambled to find a chair. "Where's Danny?" he demanded, an irritated frown creasing his forehead.

Lindsay's stomach lurched in sympathy for her unsuspecting husband. Clearly, their boss wasn't in the best of moods today. He must have had another run in with Chief Sinclair because there wasn't much else that put him in this much of a bad humour. She glanced at her watch and her commiseration turned to puzzlement. Nearly fifteen minutes had passed since she'd spoken to Danny. What was taking him so long?

"Umm, I saw him in the office earlier," she offered a little hesitantly. "He said he had something to finish off but that he'd be along as soon as he was done."

"Go and get him," Mac instructed. "We haven't got all day."

'Great' Lindsay thought as she did as commanded. 'How did I get dragged into this?'

Her indignation rapidly evaporated as she approached the office however. Danny was still sitting where she'd left him, the phone clutched in his hand but now lying uselessly on the desk-top. He had his back to her, but she could tell from the rigid set of his shoulders that something was wrong. Her stomach roiled with foreboding.

"Danny?" she questioned quietly. He didn't react, which only increased her disquiet.

"Honey?" she said, lightly touching his shoulder as she moved to stand in front of him.

He flinched at her touch, a veil falling from his dazed eyes as he registered her presence. "Baby, what's wrong?" she asked in concern, perching on the edge of the desk and reaching out to palm his ravaged face in her hands. "What is it, sweetheart?"

He looked shell-shocked. His face was pasty white, his eyes wide and distressed. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound emerged. She watched him swallow with obvious difficulty before he eventually forced the words past the restricting lump in his throat.

"Bert's dead," he told her, his voice cracking over the devastating words. "He's gone, Lindsay."

As a painful crack opened up inside Lindsay's heart, Danny broke down in tears as the shock and grief over his long-time friend's sudden passing finally overwhelmed him…

_**To be continued…**_


	45. Never Forget

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hey! Sorry for the really long wait. Busy time at work coupled with some IT issues at home :-( It was also important for me to get this chapter right – you'll understand why when you read it. Any inaccuracies in events are purely my own and entirely unintentional.

Anyway, that said; let's return to where we last left our favourite protagonists…

**OOOOOO**

"_Bert's dead," he told her, his voice cracking over the devastating words. "He's gone, Lindsay."_

_**Part 45 – Never Forget**_

Sometime around two in the morning, Lindsay awoke to find the bed beside her empty. She sighed heavily as she reached out to run a hand over the wrinkled sheets. She'd been hoping that Danny would sleep, but she should have realised that she was asking for a miracle with that. Bert's death had knocked him sideways and it would be a long time before he came to terms with losing his friend so suddenly. The funeral was scheduled for later on that day and still the shock of it had barely worn off.

The four days since they'd learned of Bert's passing had gone by in a confused blur. It had taken a while, but Lindsay had gradually pieced together what had happened to their friend. Danny hadn't been in a fit state to tell her much else after he'd haltingly informed her of Bert's death, and it was only through speaking to the old man's daughter the following morning that she'd learned the full story. The usually sprightly pensioner had suffered a massive heart attack over breakfast at the diner that he and Danny so often frequented, but by the time the EMT's had been called and he'd been transported to the ER, there wasn't much the doctors could do to save him. He had been pronounced dead soon after his arrival and his family had been contacted with the tragic news.

It had been the diner's owner, Maddy, who had called Danny at the Lab to tell him what had happened. She had abandoned her restaurant to travel with Bert in the ambulance, over-riding the EMT's objections of her not being immediate family. Lindsay had met Maddy several times and could imagine the blistering retort the woman would have delivered against that particular brand of officialdom.

'You don't have to be blood to be family,' she'd have told them snappily and it was true because Bert _was_ family to her - and to Danny, Lindsay and Lucy as well.

Her husband had been virtually catatonic with grief that first day and she'd eventually been forced to call his parents after being unable to coax him even slightly out of it. She'd needed her in-laws to take Lucy for the night because she knew the little girl would be upset to see her beloved Daddy in such a state. Thankfully, they hadn't had to keep Lucy any longer than that because Danny had at least been able to function on a basic level the following morning, even if he was a mere shadow of his usual self.

Lindsay had been forced to break the news of Bert's tragic death to their little daughter and it was probably one of the hardest things that she'd had to do as a mother so far. She wasn't sure whether Lucy really understood the consequences of what she'd been told though. She'd grasped the concept of her Uncle Bert living up in heaven with the Angels easily enough, but only time would tell whether she truly understood that meant that she would never get to see him again.

Lindsay's main concern right now was Danny however. Mac had given him a week's compassionate leave, but if he didn't pull himself together enough to return to work on Monday then he'd be forced to take some of the precious time that they'd been saving up for a vacation later on in the year. Lindsay felt that they needed that break more than ever now so she was desperate to find a way to help him come to terms before it came to that.

Hopefully the funeral would be the cathartic release that he needed, because otherwise she wasn't sure what else she could do to help him. Lucy seemed to be offering Danny more comfort than she, his wife, was managing at the moment and she was beginning to feel increasingly despondent about her ability to support him through this dark time. He'd been her rock to lean on as she'd struggled with her depression over the past few months, but if she couldn't return the favour then where did that leave them?

Lucy seemed to somehow instinctively sense that her father wasn't in the mood for their usual rough-and-tumble play and had taken to crawling into his lap to tell him a story dreamt up from her imagination instead. Tears had slid silently down Lindsay's cheeks as she'd observed one of these exchanges the previous day. In Lucy's simplistic view of the world, story's made her feel better so she assumed the same would be the case for her father. It wasn't going to take away the pain, but she could tell Danny was grateful for the gesture. His hand had risen to play with his daughter's soft curls as she'd chattered away, and the blank look had slid away from his eyes for a time, revealing the storm of emotions within.

Lindsay knew why Danny was struggling so much with Bert's death of course. The ties of friendship between them were ocean deep. It had to do with the circumstances under which they'd met. Letting go of that bond had brought back the horror of the event which had forged it. Bert had been Danny's anchor in the storm and now he'd been cast unexpectedly adrift. Now he had to face the memories alone without his stalwart companion by his side.

Lindsay would never forget the night that Danny had related his experience of that fateful day to her. It had affected her profoundly, but she'd not really understood the true import of his confidence until now. He'd chosen to tell her of one of the most significant experiences of his life - why then and why in that moment she would never know, but why her she thought she finally understood.

Rising from the bed, she padded barefoot through into the living room and found Danny standing at the window, gazing out over the rain-soaked night. The only light came from the lamp on the bureau in the corner, leaving the rest of the room cast in shadows. Crossing to join him, she wrapped her arms around his waist from behind and pressed a delicate kiss between his shoulder-blades. "Baby, come back to bed," she murmured against his chilled skin.

He didn't move or respond, but she felt him relax into her embrace a little which was something at least. Letting out a small sigh, she turned her head and rested her cheek against his back. "I don't know what to do to make it better," she confessed.

"You can't make it better, Lindsay." Danny's voice was stark as it broke the hushed stillness of the room.

"So tell me how to help you," she implored. "I want to be here for you, Danny, the way you've been here for me over the last few months."

"You are," he said, turning in her arms so that she could look up into his face. He stroked his fingers through her hair and rested his forehead against hers. "You're exactly where I need you to be," he assured her. "Here – by my side."

Out of necessity, she and Lucy had more or less moved in with him for the duration. Staying at Stella's hadn't really been an option for them because, as much as their colleague had been willing to help, Danny needed to be somewhere that felt like home. Lindsay refused to leave him to deal with his grief alone, so she'd packed herself, Lucy and their belongings up and transplanted them to Danny's apartment. They hadn't really discussed whether it would be a temporary or permanent arrangement, but that was of little consequence right now. The most important thing was that she was here by his side doing everything she could to support him.

"So talk to me, Danny," she urged. "Tell me what you're thinking, how you're feeling."

"I'm not sure I really know," he told her. "Everything feels so strange, like I'm floating in some sort of vacuum. And the memories…" He faltered. "…the memories keep popping up out of nowhere. It's all confused; sometimes I don't know what's reality and what's not. I look out the window and I don't see the rain, the night. I see bright-blue sky, a beautiful fall day, and then fire, dust, confusion…" He closed his eyes to shut out the painful images. "I'm supposed to be thinking about Bert."

"Honey, you are," Lindsay gently reassured him. "Your memories of him are so tied up in that day, losing him is bound to bring it back. The friend you discovered in Bert in the worst of circumstances had a major impact on your life, you know that."

"He could always see to the heart of me," Danny admitted with a faint smile.

"And you to him," Lindsay reminded him. "Your normal defences were stripped away by events out of your control so neither of you had a choice. If there was some good to be found amidst all that tragedy, it was surely that, don't you think?"

Danny nodded, knowing she was right. As dawn had broken on Tuesday September the 11th 2001, Bert McNamara, a semi-retired businessman from Brooklyn and Danny Messer, a young inexperienced cop with the NYPD, had been two strangers destined to be sitting at adjacent tables in a Manhattan diner when a seeming accident had evolved into an event that had shaken the entire world to its very core. By the time that terrible day in history had drawn to a close, they would be friends for life and beyond...

_**Tuesday September 11th 2001…**_

It was his day off so he'd indulged in a lie-in – although having gotten up for a 7 AM shift for the past eight weeks, this hadn't amounted to more than a couple of hours extra in bed. He arrived at the diner not long after eight o'clock and ordered the breakfast special. What with the regular overtime he'd been putting in over the past couple of months, he deserved a treat and food was – regrettably - his only extravagance at the moment. He couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten laid and the frustration was definitely starting to bite.

Maybe he'd go out on the town later, see if the old Messer charm still had the capacity to attract the ladies. He was on the late shift the following day so it wasn't as if he had to get up early tomorrow. A little female companionship was just what he needed right now. It didn't do to let the grass grow under your feet in that respect, you could get out of practise and lose all your mojo without even realising it.

When the waitress – Maddy according to her 'Hi! My Name is… How May I Help you?' badge – brought his food, he smiled his thanks and then tucked in with relish, absently listening into the conversation she was having with the old guy at the next table as he ate.

"How ya doin' today, Bert?" she enquired in a bright voice.

"Much better for seeing you, my darlin'," he replied, laying it on a little thick in Danny's opinion.

Maddy however, beamed genially at her customer. "Well, you must be feeling better if you're up to flirting with me," she remarked.

Bert nodded. "I have my good days and my bad," he said. "My Molly wouldn't want me to mourn her forever. She always said you should live every day like it was your last because you never knew what tomorrow would bring."

"Good philosophy that," Maddy said sagely. "Molly knew her stuff." She smiled affectionately. "I wouldn't have had the courage to open this place if it wasn't for her. I remember her telling me 'you got rid of the loser husband, how about you ditch the loser boss too?'"

Bert chuckled. "She always did know how to make a point," he remarked with a smile.

"And how to make you think something was your own idea when really it was her who had talked you into it," Maddy said with a laugh. "I never did ask – how did she persuade you to invest in this place?"

"She fed me your banana cream pie and I was sold. A woman who can make a good dessert is one worth investing in… You remember that, young buck," he added, drawing Danny into the conversation and making him realise that his eavesdropping hadn't gone unnoticed and that the old man was considerably sharper than he looked. "A woman with legs up to her armpits is all well and good, but if she can't make a decent banana cream pie then she isn't the one."

"I'll try to remember that," Danny said with a quick grin at Maddy. "When - or if - I ever decide I'm ready for 'the one' that is."

"If you weren't such a charmer, Bert, I'd slap you upside the head for that," Maddy declared. "You did not marry Molly for her cooking skills."

"No, I married her for her looks, her cooking skills and her mind in ascending order," Bert replied with aplomb. "A forwarding thinking idea in my day, but one that led to nearly thirty years of happy marriage so there has to be something right with it."

"And you don't decide when you're ready for 'the one'," he added as an aside to Danny. "It happens when fate decides."

"Not if I can help it," Danny told him with an exaggerated shudder.

Bert chuckled knowingly. "Oh you'll learn, boy," he said confidently. "And when you do, you'll remember this conversation and wonder how you could have been such a goddamn chump."

"Hey Bert!" Maddy protested. "No insulting the customers – I've gotta make money here."

Danny laughed. "Keep cooking like this," he said, indicating his almost cleared plate, "And I'll ignore the old guy's eccentricities."

"I'm not that old," Bert protested. "There's a good few years left in the old dog yet."

"And the world will be a better place for them," Maddy said with a smile and then gasped, her eyes opening wide as a sound of a distant explosion reverberated through the restaurant. "Whoa! What was that?" she exclaimed.

Danny, mimicking the gesture of several other customers, rose to his feet and moved to the window to see if he could identify what was going on. At first all seemed well - he could see the South Tower of the World Trade Center standing tall and proud in the distance - but then he spotted the the plume of thick black smoke coming from behind the building that was obscuring the diner's view of the second of the Twin Towers.

"Turn the sound on," he instructed curtly, turning around and indicating the TV playing a twenty-four hour news broadcast on silent above the counter. Maddy did as he asked; retrieving the remote from near the cash register and turning up the volume so that the entire restaurant could hear what was going on.

At first, there was nothing but then a 'Breaking News' item interrupted the main broadcast and the image flickered to that of the World Trade Center. The North Tower was shrouded in smoke and what looked like confetti was fluttering around it like a formation of doves hovering in mid-air. Danny eventually realised it was paper, reams and reams of it swirling haphazardly in the breeze. The broadcaster reported that it appeared that some sort of small aircraft had struck the North Tower, but Danny – who had a keen interest in forensics despite being a beat cop – wasn't convinced. With a gaping hole like that, the plane had to be a commercial jet – a light aircraft did not cause that kind of damage.

"Oh My God! Those poor people," Maddy said, her hands rising to cover her mouth in horror.

By now the sound of sirens wailing on their way towards the scene could be heard in the background. They continued to watch, utterly transfixed. It seemed as if it was all playing out on a movie-screen in front of them and yet the reality of it was only a few blocks away. Around nine am however, what had first seemed like a terrible accident transformed into something a whole lot more sinister.

Initially, Danny wasn't sure whether what he was seeing was real but a split second later he was left in no doubt that it was. A second explosion ripped through the air and he hurried to the window to verify that what he was seeing on the TV screen was echoed by the reality outside. Wrenching open the door, he dashed out into the street and stood on the sidewalk with a number of others, trying to process the horror unfolding in front of him. A second plane had struck the South Tower – this time he could see the evidence with his own eyes… New York City was under attack.

He stood, frozen to the spot in shock for several bewildering minutes, before some inner instinct kicked in. He was an officer with the NYPD. Off duty or not, he was honour-bound to ensure that the civilians in his vicinity were safe. Shaking off his shocked stupor, he hurried back inside the diner and reached in his jacket pocket for his badge – he always carried it with him just in case.

"NYPD, everybody out!" he ordered in a strident tone, lifting his badge to emphasise his authority. His fellow diners either looked at him with shocked incomprehension or remained glued to the horrifying images on the TV screen. Danny wasn't stupid – the Towers may have been a feat of modern engineering but would they really withstand any further impacts? It wasn't worth taking any chances as far as he was concerned. They were several blocks away, but they were still too close - people needed to be evacuated now.

"Out!" he repeated urgently, grabbing hold of one woman's purse and thrusting it into her shaking hands. "Head downtown. Go! Go now!"

"You heard the officer," a commanding voice came from behind him. He turned to see the old guy from earlier herding several people out the door. Bert nodded at him once in curt acknowledgement and then continued with his task.

"I need to turn off the ovens!" Maddy said frantically.

Danny was tempted to tell her not to bother, but figured the fire department had enough to deal with right now. Following her into the kitchen, he helped her shut off all the equipment, satisfied that Bert would finish off the evacuation. His mind was whirring – where was the nearest precinct? He'd have to report for duty as soon as he was done here – how many people had been in the Towers when the planes had hit? It must have been hundreds if not thousands. His own precinct was all the way across the other side of Manhattan and it'd take him far too long to get there.

Eventually it was just him, Bert and Maddy left. "Do you know where the nearest precinct is?" he asked the restaurant owner as she grabbed her purse and keys from behind the counter.

"Umm, a couple of blocks that way," she answered, gesturing vaguely. "Where do I go?" she asked as they headed out into the street and waited on the sidewalk while she locked up with shaking fingers. "I live up there," she said, pointing to the apartment above the shop.

Bert took her shoulders to steady her. "Your sister lives out on Staten Island, right?" he said.

Maddy nodded a little numbly in reply.

"How about you visit her then?" he suggested kindly.

"Yes, yes, I'll do that," Maddy said, latching onto this idea with gratitude. "It's been a while since I've seen her." Her glazed expression cleared a little as her scrambled senses slotted back into some sort of order. "Will you be all right?" she asked him.

"I'll be fine," he assured her as the three of them headed off down the street together.

Steady streams of people were now heading in the same direction so they were soon surrounded. A young woman dressed in a navy-blue business suit and too-high heels weaved a haphazard path nearby, seemingly unable to walk in a straight line. Her heel caught and she let out a small cry of alarm as she tripped and fell. She landed heavily on her hands and knees and stayed there, quiet sobs emanating from the back of her throat.

Maddy – having finally thrown off her own confusion – was there first, helping the distressed girl to her feet and murmuring to her in soothing tones.

"They're all trapped," the young woman suddenly said, her eyes wild. "The stairs they… they can't get up to them." She lifted her tear-filled gaze to Maddy's warm sympathetic one. "They – the fireman – they keep going up."

"Of course they do," Maddy said in a bracing tone as she slipped an arm around the shocked girl's waist and urged her onwards. "They won't give up."

Danny shot a look back over his shoulder in the direction from which they'd come. The girl's story had made him want to turn around and head back towards the scene of the crime, not away from it. For once, he resisted the urge to do the impulsive thing however, knowing he would be much more effective as part of a co-ordinated team. Sucking in a fortifying breath, he deliberately turned his back on the devastation and kept putting one foot in front of the other, his gaze focused determinedly ahead.

At the end of the next street, he attempted to bid his companions farewell, but quickly discovered that Bert wasn't having any of it. "Boy, I'm a United States Marine!" he declared when Danny protested the older man's insistence on accompanying him to the precinct.

Danny nodded, not able to argue with that irrefutable statement. The use of the present rather than the past tense said it all. Once a Marine always a Marine, isn't that what they said? Given how effectively Bert had helped him co-ordinate the evacuation of the diner earlier, he could be useful in a similar capacity back at the precinct. The New York Fire and Police Department would need all the backroom assistance they could muster today. The majority of serving officers would be needed on the front line.

"All right," he said, not wanting to waste time with useless argument, "But no heroics okay?"

"You're the one with the badge," Bert told him with a tight smile. "I'll leave that to you."

Danny, who had never had to deal with anything on this scale before, privately thought that maybe the old man was better equipped for that but chose not to voice such an opinion. If he thought about it too much, he'd be overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation and be ineffectual as a result. Utter chaos surrounded them, but he blocked it out, keeping his mind focused on where he needed to get to and what he needed to do. Such was his distraction that it was Bert who reacted first when the ground beneath their feet suddenly started to shake.

"Jesus, it's coming down!" he exclaimed. He reached out and gripped Danny's arm in an iron fist. "Run!"

Danny did - his greater speed and agility dragging his older companion behind him in his wake. He cast a frantic look back over his shoulder, saw the cloud of dust approaching and instinctively reacted to the need to find shelter. Switching directions, he headed for the doorway of a nearby apartment block. The door was locked but a well-placed boot splintered it in on its hinges and he shoved Bert inside ahead of him and then turned back to usher in as many of his fleeing compatriots as he could. Most in their panic just continued to run but a few responded to his urgent summons and joined them. When the swirling dust was only a few feet away, he dashed inside, slammed and then physically held the door shut with his weight as the darkness descended…

**OOOOOO**

Back in the present, Danny shuddered and came back to himself, glancing down at the woman he held tightly within his embrace. She was gazing up at him, the compassion evident in her warm brown eyes. She'd seen him retreat back into his memory again, but rather than try to pull him out of it, had remained where she was nestled in the circle of his arms, his lifebuoy to grab hold of should he need one.

His fingertips absently traced the outline of her face, his blue eyes thoughtful. "You make great banana cream pie," he murmured softly.

"Huh?" Her brow creased in confusion.

"Sign of a good woman," he told her with a crooked half-smile.

"In the world according to Bert, I take it?" she enquired with an answering grin.

He nodded. "Yeah." His fingers brushed contemplatively over the bow of her lips. "He was right."

"About what?" she asked in a hushed tone.

"Everything," he breathed as he dipped his head and pressed his lips firmly to hers.

Sliding her hands up his back, Lindsay allowed herself to be swept up into the kiss. She could feel the tension within him vibrating under her fingertips as his mouth explored hers with hungry intent. When he wordlessly broke off their embrace, took her by the hand and led her through into the bedroom, she followed without resistance, standing docilely while he silently undressed her. When he pushed her back onto the bed and climbed up alongside her, she went willingly. If this was what he needed, then she'd give it, no questions asked.

At first, his touch was gentle and restrained, but it quickly became frantic and needy as the emotions he could no longer suppress consumed him. He made love to her as if his very life depended on it, and she responded with similar passion, holding nothing back from him as he took the physical comfort that he so desperately needed. The time for words would come later. Right now though, actions spoke infinitely louder than words. She lost herself in him while he steeped himself in the soothing reality of her love.

As their lovemaking neared its culmination, she tasted the salt of his tears on her tongue and her heart went out to him. "Let it go," she murmured against his lips as his body tensed and shuddered above hers.

"Lindsay…" Her name was a drawn-out plea, a request for absolution.

"I'm here, I'll catch you," she vowed with feeling.

It was enough. He let go and - true to her promise - she caught him as he fell…

**OOOOOO**

It was as if the world had ended. There was no other way to describe it. Where as before, there'd been screams, chaos and confusion, now there was eerie silence, broken only by the sound of an occasional wrenching cough. The dust was a miasma, a grey ash that covered animal, vegetable and mineral alike. The door had held back the worst of it, but it had worked its way in through any nook or cranny that it could find.

He felt a hand on his back and looked up into Bert's dust-covered face. "Up," the older man croaked.

Danny nodded, pushing away from the door and heading for the nearby staircase. It was several storeys before a shaft of sunlight pierced the gloom. They headed for the small window on the third floor landing and peered out.

"Oh my God!"

They were on the tail-end of it, but debris and grey powder coated the street an inch thick below. The cloud was starting to settle near where they were, but was still billowing wildly further up the street.

Danny closed his eyes, saying a silent prayer for colleagues that he knew must be lost. "I've got to get to precinct," he said urgently. It was the only thing that mattered right now. He knew his parents would be trying to get hold of him, his brother too, but he also knew they'd be safe. His parents rarely ventured into this part of the city and Louis, for once, had a respectable job as a mechanic at a repair shop in Staten Island. His heart squeezed as he realised that in this respect he was one of the lucky ones. There were other families who would not be so fortunate, he knew.

He glanced at Bert. "Your family?"

"My daughter – she and her husband live up-state. She'll be worried…"

"But she'll be safe," Danny finished for him.

Bert nodded. "Come on," he said decisively. "We can't do anything useful standing around here and we've got to get these people out of here."

They arrived at the precinct just before the second tower fell, this time out of the immediate vicinity but not immune to the resulting horror. Danny was quickly put to work escorting the injured to whatever hospital was available to take them, whereas Bert remained back at base, helping to man the all important radios. Danny didn't ask how his new friend knew what to do; he just figured he'd had a similar role as a Marine. It was comforting to hear Bert's heavily accented voice in his ear as he repeatedly ventured out into the wilderness that the area around the Twin Towers had become. It kept him focused on the job, didn't allow the full import of what he was witnessing to register on his brain and render him incapable.

Eventually, long hours later, he was ordered home. He hadn't wanted to leave, but his head was fuzzy and his legs were beginning to shake from exhaustion. Bert accompanied him – it was almost as if he'd stuck around to do just that. Perhaps he had – Danny would never really know – all he knew was that Bert was there when he needed him and he would never forget that as long as he lived.

Getting home was easier said than done however. They decided to walk. "You can stay at my place," Bert said. "It's nearer."

Danny just nodded dazedly, no longer having the strength to object. He did rouse himself out of his stupor when they reached Bert's place in Brooklyn however. "This is yours?" he asked incredulously. It was a house rather than the apartment he was expecting.

Bert nodded. "It's one of my properties, yes. I usually let this one out but I'm between tenants at the moment."

Danny lifted his eyebrows. "Properties? Plural? What are you? A multi-millionaire or somethin'?"

Bert laughed. "Not quite, but I have done well for myself, I guess. Worked hard for it though," he added as he unlocked the door and ushered Danny inside.

The house was sparsely furnished and definitely in need of a little modernising, but it had all that they needed right now. "We'll have to wait for the water to heat up, but we'll eat first," Bert said, indicating the supplies he'd picked up on the way.

Danny forced the food down almost mechanically, but the hot shower did revive him somewhat. "I'm too wired to sleep," he told Bert as he came downstairs afterwards.

Bert nodded and handed him a beer. "Figured as much," he said shortly.

Dawn was fast approaching when they eventually went to bed and by then they had exchanged almost a lifetime's worth of experience. Danny wasn't normally one to confide in someone he'd just met in this way, in fact he wasn't normally one to confide in anybody, but there was just something about that night that had made him open up. Maybe it was knowing that there were thousands of others out there who were not so lucky, who were still scouring the streets hoping for some word of a missing loved one. He had his home and his health, his family were safe and he'd made a new friend to boot. His city of birth may have been hit by unimaginable devastation, but he was still here, he was still standing tall and he would go on. Life was what you made it and he wasn't going to waste another precious second…

**OOOOOO**

She held him until he'd cried himself out. "I'm sorry," he told her when he eventually managed to regain control of his emotions.

"For what?" she asked, snuggling into his side and reaching up a hand to lightly stroke his ravaged face.

"For just now, for… for…"

"Using me for my body?" she suggested with an amused smile.

He smiled in spite of himself. "Something like that, I guess."

She sighed, resting her arm on his chest and her chin on her hand. "You don't have to apologise. I'm here when you need me, you know that."

He stroked his fingers through her hair. "I didn't give you much of a chance to say no."

"Did I act like I _wanted_ to say no?" she countered.

He shook his head. She'd given herself willingly, allowed him to take what he needed without question.

"Having to face death makes you crave life," she quietly observed, her words mirroring his own thinking.

He nodded. "Yeah, I guess it does," he agreed. "And you're my life." He kissed her to emphasise that point.

"I keep seeing the faces on the posters," he went on contemplatively when they broke apart. "Remembering Bert, Maddy in the weeks afterwards…" He trailed off. "I never really told you about that, did I?"

Lindsay shook her head.

"We went back, Bert and me, a few days later. Maddy had contacted him. She'd been staying with her sister but she wanted to go back. The diner was a mess but not unsalvageable. I spent all my spare time there, helping her get things back into order. I wasn't the only one – others who were there that day did the same. It was like we were connected somehow and we got things back up and running within a week or so. Maddy wanted to do more to help though. People were still coming into the restaurant hoping for news, but inside you knew their searching was fruitless. She pinned up all of their homemade posters - they were all over the walls for months - plus she fed them, offered sympathy..."

Lindsay nodded as he paused. Maddy still had those posters, she knew. A number of them were glass-framed into a collage that hung on the diner's wall as a memorial. The rest were stored away carefully in boxes. She remembered Maddy showing them to her on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities. She and Danny had attended a remembrance event that Mac had organised, but afterwards had picked up the then two year old, Lucy from her babysitter and headed for the place where Danny's 9/11 story had begun.

"I keep them in case anyone comes back," Maddy had told her. "And because nobody should ever forget."

She shifted in Danny's arms, manoeuvring herself so that her face was level with his. "It's the funeral later," she informed him quietly, reluctant to bring it up but knowing she had to. She wasn't really sure whether he had properly registered the arrangements.

He nodded. "I know. I think I'm ready to face it now. I need to go to Maddy's… and… and to Ground Zero first though. Don't ask me why, I just do."

She kissed him. "Whatever you need," she said easily. "You should try and get some sleep. It's gonna be a long day."

He nodded his acceptance so she rolled over and turned off the light. He immediately pulled her back against him, spooning his body around hers and shattering the distance his emotionally numbing grief had inadvertently placed between them over the past few days. She curled her fingers around his where his hand rested heavy and warm against her stomach and felt his lips lightly caress her cheek in response. Tired as she undoubtedly was, Lindsay waited until his breathing evened out into the steady rhythm of sleep before she finally succumbed to her own weariness and slept too.

**OOOOOO**

Even though they intended to leave her with Shelley for the actual funeral, they decided to take Lucy along with them to Maddy's the following morning. The diner was closed for business, but Maddy greeted them with genuine enthusiasm despite that.

"I'm sorry; I guess I didn't think…" Danny stuttered in apology for his assumption that breakfast would still be available even on a day like today.

"Oh ssh," Maddy admonished him as she hugged him affectionately. "I was just going to make myself something and this way we'll be able to honour Bert in style."

"How's he doing?" she asked Lindsay when the two of them retreated to the kitchen to prepare the food.

"Getting there," Lindsay replied. "It's been a tough few days."

"For all of us," Maddy agreed, "But it must have hit Danny harder than most – the two of them were practically like father and son… actually no, that's not true," she amended, "More like Uncle and favourite nephew, I think."

Lindsay nodded, understanding the distinction. Bert was special, no doubt about that, but Danny had a father already and hadn't needed or wanted another.

"Danny was like family to Bert," Maddy continued. "I mean he had his daughter Anna and his grandchildren and everything, but I don't think they got to see each other as often as Bert might have liked. She asked him to go and live with her and her family up-state once, you know, but Bert's always been a city dweller and I don't think the life-style would have suited him. I guess Anna knew that because she didn't make a fuss when he decided against it."

"Have you met Anna then?" Lindsay asked her.

Maddy nodded. "I was great friends with Molly, Bert's wife, before she died and Anna's only a few years younger than me so we stayed in touch. Mostly by email though."

"And Danny? I've never really thought to ask him that."

"Yeah, he's met her several times. Took Lucy up with Bert to visit for a week or so around a year ago, I think."

Lindsay nodded, belatedly recalling the torturous week she'd spent apart from her little girl. She'd not been able to refuse when Danny had asked to take Lucy on vacation, but it had been the longest time she'd spent apart from her daughter since the day she was born and she'd missed her terribly. Coupled with her growing regrets about their impending divorce, it had been a particularly bad time for Lindsay and the sourness had only been sweetened by Lucy's effervescent greetings on her return. Her daughter's unconditional love had been the only lightness in Lindsay's increasing dark back then, and the only reason she'd managed to hold off the suffocating effects of her depression for so long.

She sighed as the sudden weight on her shoulders threatened to drag her down before she resolutely shook herself out of it. She was determined to be strong - Danny needed her and she wasn't going to let him down. They would get through this. Together. It was yet another test of their renewed commitment to each other. The situation wasn't a complete repeat of their earlier history but it came pretty close to it. Years ago, burdened by grief, he'd shut her out of his life. Now, a seeming lifetime later, they were in a similar position again. Would he allow her to be there for him? Initial indications looked good, but only time would tell whether they could sustain it.

After they'd eaten their morning meal, they gathered themselves together and took the short walk to Ground Zero to pay their respects to the fallen. Lindsay stood quietly by her husband's side, her fingers interlaced through his as he gazed out over the memorial with unseeing eyes. It was a bright, crisp winter's day and their breath steamed in the chill air in front of them.

Lucy, infected by her parents' sombre mood, pressed her gloved hands reverently against the cool stone. She had no idea of its significance but responded to the ethereal power of the place nonetheless. Lindsay fully intended to explain everything when her daughter was old enough to understand, but felt that she was still a little young right now. She didn't know whether she was right or wrong with that, but had to trust her instincts because she had nothing else to go by. It would just be a story to Lucy at the moment – the true import of it would be lost to her innocence.

But it was an experience that her father had lived though, a legacy of loss that her home city would forever carry in its collective heart. It was important that their daughter understood that. She was a New Yorker – Lindsay could already detect traces of an accent in her daughter's piping speech. It was tempered by her own country roots, but it was there, a tangible memento of her daughter's origins, of the city that they all called home.

There was an insistent tug on her coat. "Mommy?"

She looked down at her little girl. "Yes, sweetie?" she said quietly.

"Are you and Daddy going to say goodbye to Uncle Bert today?"

Lindsay nodded. "We are, yes."

"Why can't I come?"

Releasing Danny's hand, Lindsay knelt down in front of her daughter. "Because it's a goodbye for grown-ups," she explained as succinctly as she could.

"But I want to say goodbye too," Lucy objected with a pout.

"I know you do, honey."

Lindsay briefly reconsidered taking Lucy with them, but dismissed it just as quickly. She and Danny had discussed it earlier and had decided against it. There wasn't enough time to explain things properly to her for one, and for another, they didn't know how either of them was going to handle the funeral personally – Danny especially. Taking their daughter along with them would simply be too much to deal with at the moment. Lucy would always be their number one priority, but other considerations had to take precedent right now.

"You, me and Daddy will have our own special goodbye another time, okay?" she said in a placating tone.

"Tomorrow?" Lucy asked, not one to let go of an idea once it was rooted in her head.

Lindsay glanced up at Danny, who nodded in silent agreement. "Okay tomorrow," she said, leaning in to kiss her daughter's forehead.

"Will Daddy not be so sad then?"

Lindsay sighed as she studied Lucy's worried little face. Their daughter had had a lot to cope with over the past few months. She hadn't been able to shield her little girl entirely from the effects of her depression, but at least Lucy had always had Danny's strength to rely on. And now this - it must seem as if the world had been pulled out from under her feet.

"I think it will help, yes," she answered carefully, "But Daddy will be sad about Uncle Bert for a while yet, baby."

Lucy's bottom lip quivered and Lindsay's heart broke for her. This was life, but she shouldn't have to handle so much of it, so young. She gathered her little girl in her arms and Lucy clung to her tightly. Standing up, she turned to her husband, whose eyes were full as he observed them. He reached out for her and she went to him, allowing her own tears to fall as he wrapped the two of them in his arms and held them close.

"I still have you," he whispered into her hair.

"Always," she whispered back. "Never forgot."

"Never," he assured her emotionally. "Never again…"

_**To be continued…**_

_This chapter is dedicated to the victims of 9/11 and their families. Never Forget._


	46. Where We Belong

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi! New chapter for you. Hope you enjoy x

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 46 – Where We Belong**_

_**Several days later…**_

"So how are _you_ doing?" Elizabeth Monroe asked a couple of minutes into her phone conversation with her daughter, the emphasis firmly on the word 'you'.

"Mom…" Lindsay protested mildly to this inevitable query from her devoted mother. She was sitting cross-legged on the sofa in the break-room at the Lab, her phone pressed to her ear.

"I worry about you," her Mom cut in before she could continue any further. "You're still recovering from your last bout of depression and Danny…" She paused. "Well, I've been able to rely on him to be there for you up until now…"

"Mom!" This time Lindsay's voice was tinged with significantly more protest.

Her mother sighed. "I didn't mean it like that, you know I didn't. I feel for him, of course I do, but I still worry."

"Well don't," Lindsay said firmly. "I'm okay. In fact if you want to know the truth – as sad as the situation is – it's also been something of a personal boost for me. Danny has been my rock over the past few months and now I can be the same for him. I feel like I'm contributing something to our relationship for once - instead of being a burden and taking from it all the time."

"I'm sure Danny doesn't see it like that," Elizabeth soothed.

"I know he doesn't, but that's not really the point, is it? This is about how _I_feel, and there's something empowering about being the strong one for once."

"As long as you're sure you're all right," her mother repeated.

Lindsay sighed. "Mom, you worry too much."

"You're my baby, I can't do anything else," her mother countered.

"I know," Lindsay said softly, "But I'm fine, honestly. And Danny's doing better too," she went on. "It took a while for the shock to wear off, but I think he's slowly starting to come to terms with Bert's death now."

"That's good," Elizabeth said with genuine feeling. Despite her concern for her daughter, she did feel for what her son-in-law was going through. "I'm glad."

"It's actually Lucy I'm more worried about right now," Lindsay said, finally voicing her concern for her daughter – the main reason she'd called her mother in the first place.

"She's gotten really clingy all of a sudden," she explained, "With me more than Danny, although she is a bit like it with him too. She screamed the place down when I left for my shift this morning, and it wasn't just a normal temper tantrum, Mom – you get to know the difference and she was genuinely upset."

"Oh honey," Elizabeth breathed in sympathy. "She's probably just unsettled by all the upheaval. She's had to cope with a great deal recently. The three of you have been through a lot of up-and-downs over the past two years."

"I know, and that's what bothers me. She seemed to handle everything okay at the time, but what if she's just been bottling it all up and now it's finally starting to come out?" Lindsay said, gnawing worriedly at her bottom lip. "Do you think I should take her to see someone?"

"I think that might be a bit premature," Elizabeth said. "Kids are surprisingly resilient, you know. Just give her some time. If she hasn't settled down in a few weeks then maybe you should think about it. Right now, she probably just needs some extra time and attention from you."

Lindsay sighed. "Unfortunately, that's easier said than done what with work and everything else that's been going on."

"I thought you'd cut down on your hours to give you more balance in that respect?" her mother said.

"I have," Lindsay replied. "It's just that I volunteered to do a few extra shifts over the next couple of weeks to take the pressure off Danny a bit..." She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger in agitation. "But that was before I realised that this thing with Lucy wasn't just a temporary glitch. I feel like I have to choose between my husband and my daughter, Mom," she finished plaintively. "How do I do that?"

"You don't. You talk to Danny – tell him of your concerns and decide how best to deal with it together."

"But he'll just say that Lucy has to come first," Lindsay argued, "And then I'm gonna feel like I'm letting him down somehow."

"Well, you shouldn't. The two of you chose to bring a child into this world and that means that you have to be prepared to make the appropriate sacrifices. Danny's a grown man, sweetheart. As difficult as his grief is to bear, he _is_ equipped to deal with it. Of course you want to make things easier for him, that's only natural, but Lucy has to be your priority here. It's not a matter of choice; it's a matter of necessity. He'll understand that."

Lindsay sighed. "I know, I know. I just wish it didn't have to be one or the other, that's all."

"However much you might wish it, you can't be everything to everyone all of the time, honey. It doesn't mean you can't be there for Danny in other ways. You work within a close-knit team from what you've told me - they'll be willing to help make things a little easier on him at work, won't they?"

"Well yeah, but I don't like to keep asking them for favours, not when they've been bending over backwards to support us through everything else. The last six months have been a pretty turbulent ride for us, and they've been there every step of the way. Just when I think we're finally getting things together though, there always seems to something else for us to deal with."

"That's the way of life sometimes," Elizabeth observed. "And it's at times like these that you discover who your true friends are. I'll always remember the way it was after the diner shooting. Some people who we'd always considered friends up until then avoided us like the plague, but then there were others who couldn't have been more supportive. I know what we were facing was difficult to deal with, but there's a difference between not knowing what to say and crossing the street to avoid having to say hello. I knew which friendships to nurture after that."

Lindsay nodded, although her mother couldn't see her. "Well then I guess me and Danny have a lot of true friends," she remarked quietly.

"So cherish them," Elizabeth urged her. "And try not to worry too much about Lucy, okay?"

"She's my baby, I can't do anything else," Lindsay answered, echoing her mother's earlier sentiment.

"I know, but from what I've seen she's a tough little cookie just like her Mom."

Lindsay smiled. "Okay so I'll make you a deal then - I'll stop worrying about Lucy if you stop worrying about me."

"I think you're asking for the impossible there, honey," Elizabeth told her with a chuckle.

Lindsay laughed. "The perils of motherhood, huh?"

"Yes, but it's worth it in return for all the joys," her mother returned sentimentally.

"Yeah," her daughter agreed. "Yeah it is. And thanks Mom, okay? Talking to you has made me feel better…" Her face broke into a warmly affectionate smile. "Just like it always does."

"You know you can call me anytime." Elizabeth reminded her.

"I know," Lindsay answered. "And I love you, Mom."

"I love you too, sweetie."

"Look I'm sorry, but I've really gotta go now," Lindsay said then. "I'm at work so I can't be on the phone for too long."

"Okay," Elizabeth responded easily. "Give my love to Danny, won't you? And give Lucy-Lu a big hug from her Grams too."

"I will," Lindsay promised. "And I'll speak to you again soon, all right?"

"Sure thing, sweetie. I'll say bye for now then."

"Yeah, bye Mom - I love you."

Lindsay ended the call with a sigh. What she'd told her mother was true; talking things over had made her feel better about the situation, but that didn't mean her troubles were at an end. She was going to have to find an appropriate way of balancing out the needs of the two most important people in her life. Danny would always step aside for his daughter, but that wasn't the point as far as Lindsay was concerned. His needs were just as deserving as Lucy's in her mind. She was simply going to have to find a way of supporting him without sacrificing her quality time with her daughter to do so.

The man in question wandered into the break-room then, a rather bemused look on his angular face. "Hey babe," she greeted him warmly. "What's up?"

"I had a call from Bert's attorney," he told her. "He wants me to attend the reading of the will."

Lindsay nodded, not viewing this as quite so much of a surprise as Danny obviously did. "He'd have wanted to remember you somehow, I'm sure."

"But I'm not family."

"Not in blood, no, but I think in heart you were. I know you men don't like to admit such things, but he loved you as much as you loved him, Danny. You were friends for over ten years. I can't believe he intended to move on into the next world without leaving you with some memento of that time."

Danny nodded. "I don't know how Anna will feel about that," he observed sombrely.

Lindsay, who had met Bert's daughter at the funeral and discovered her to be just as congenial as her late father, didn't think he had anything to worry about in that respect. "Unless he leaves you all his worldly goods - which I very much doubt considering how proud of Anna and her family he was – I don't think she'll have any objection," she assured him. "She was grateful that you were around for him when she couldn't be. She told me so at the funeral."

"It just feels a little weird that's all. I've never known anyone who died who remembered me in their will before."

Lindsay reached out and patted his hand as he sat down beside her. "Do you want me to come with you?" she asked him.

"It's tomorrow at nine – don't you have to be in court?"

Lindsay wrinkled her nose in consternation. "Unfortunately yeah – we could meet for lunch afterwards though if you want? I think my case is scheduled fairly early on in the morning, plus the prosecutor told me I'd be called straightaway so I shouldn't be hanging around waiting to take the stand for too long."

"I guess you've got yourself a date then," Danny said.

Lindsay grinned. "Nice to know I've still got what it takes," she quipped.

Danny laughed in spite of himself. "So did Lucy get off to pre-school all right this morning?" he enquired, innocently asking the one question that was guaranteed to spoil the mood.

Lindsay sighed. "Not exactly," she told him. "We need to talk about that, but I don't think now's the time. Later okay?"

"You can't say something like that and then leave me in suspense," Danny protested. "Tell me now."

"I'm supposed to be helping Adam in the AV Lab – I told him I'd be back in ten minutes and it's already been twenty. I got a bit caught up talking to my Mom."

Danny frowned. "Your Mom called? Is anything wrong?"

"No, I called her because I wanted to ask her advice."

"About Lucy?"

"Yeah – you've got to have noticed she's not really been herself lately."

"I've noticed that she's been more of a pain in the butt than usual these last couple of days, yeah," Danny replied. "I guess there has to be a reason why she's acting out so much, huh?"

Lindsay nodded. "I would say it's more than just the typical behaviour of the average four year old, yeah," she concurred. "She clung to me as if she thought she would never see me again this morning."

"You think it's because of Bert?" Danny asked her.

"I think that's part of it, yes, and I guess everything that's been going on between the two of us since last fall has unsettled her too."

"But that's a good thing!" Danny objected.

"I know it is, but it's disrupted her routine all the same. We've gone from being reasonably civilised exes to dating and now to finally living together again – all in a matter of months. It's been a lot for her to adjust to. My Mom reckons we just need to pay her some extra attention until she feels more secure about things."

Danny sighed. "I suppose we have been caught up in our own dramas a lot lately."

"Yeah," Lindsay agreed with an incline of her head, "But us working on our relationship and getting back together is ultimately a good thing as you said. I guess we just need to be more aware of the impact it has on Lucy. I'm not sure that us moving in with you was necessarily the best thing. All I was thinking about at the time was that I wanted to be there for you; I never properly considered the effect it might have on our daughter. Us breaking up did affect her, however much we might wish it otherwise. Maybe she's worried about us splitting up again, I don't know. While we were still living apart, it was all less of an adjustment for her, but now that we're living together again…"

"She doesn't know whether to trust it or to fear it," Danny finished for her.

"Exactly," Lindsay said and then grimaced. "Of course, that's pure speculation on my part…"

"But it makes sense," Danny interrupted. "The two of us need to sit down with her and have a proper talk about everything," he said.

Lindsay nodded. "Yes but what do we tell her?"

Danny threw a quizzical look. "How do you mean?" he asked.

Lindsay shrugged. "Well - is us living together a permanent thing for instance?"

"I guess I'd not really thought that far," Danny admitted. "Before we lost Bert, I wouldn't have said we were quite ready for that yet, but now I'm not so sure. Maybe we were simply being over cautious because of everything we've been through. I think sometimes it's best to just bite the bullet and go for it."

"Kinda like we did when we got married, you mean?" Lindsay enquired with a smile.

Danny nodded. "Yeah but I feel like we are on solider ground this time around, don't you?"

"I think so," Lindsay concurred with a nod. "I hate to say it – because I loved being roomies with Stella – but I feel so much more at home at your place. At Stella's, I felt like a guest a lot of the time."

"So, how do you feel about making it a permanent thing then?" Danny asked her. "Do you want that or would you rather move back in with Stella for a while?"

Lindsay didn't need long to think about it. "I want to be with you," she said earnestly, "But, at the same time, I would like it to be in a place that's ours, you know?"

Danny nodded. "This is fresh start for us and it should be in every respect - including the roof that's over our heads."

"We don't need to start looking immediately," Lindsay assured him. "You've had a lot to deal with lately and there's no rush. We're good where we are for now."

Danny reached out for her hand, "Thanks babe," he said, squeezing her fingers. "The last thing I feel like right now is apartment-hunting if you wanna know the truth."

"So what do we say to Lucy?" Lindsay asked, returning to their earlier topic of conversation.

Danny shrugged. "The truth I guess. That there are no guarantees but that we believe that we're finally ready to live together as a family again."

It was on the tip of Lindsay's tongue to ask what that meant in terms of their official marital status, but something held her back. Their divorce was still legally on hold, the papers not yet withdrawn from the court system so she couldn't relax completely. She may have been the one who had filed for divorce in the first place, but it was Danny who had granted them this vital second chance. Therefore, it was Danny who would ultimately decide their marriage's future.

"We'll sit down with her at the weekend, yeah?" he was saying when she emerged out of her inner reverie, "When we've got a bit more time to explain things to her properly."

Lindsay nodded absently, her mind still partly on other matters.

"And in the meantime, your Mom is right," Danny went on, "It's important that she gets the quality time that she needs from you."

Lindsay felt her stomach lurch as the choice she didn't want to make was finally upon her. "But I offered to do those extra shifts for you," she pointed out.

"Yeah and I'm grateful, but things are different now, aren't they?" Danny argued. "Lucy is more important."

Lindsay sighed. "I knew you'd say that."

"And that's a bad thing?"

"No, I just… I don't want to let you down. I want to be there for you in every way I can."

Danny lifted their joined hands to his lips and pressed a kiss to the back of her knuckles. "Linds, trust me you are. Now that I feel a little less lost, it might be best for me to have something to keep my mind occupied anyway. And besides, Lucy needs her Mom."

"She needs you too."

"You're not supposed to point that out," Danny gently admonished her. He reached out and lightly caressed her cheek. "I can tell you feel torn in two, babe."

"So you're making the choice easy for me, is that it?"

"Isn't that what you do for the people you love?"

Lindsay reached out and took his face between her palms. "Apparently so," she said, her voice vibrating with affection. She leaned her forehead against his. "I love you," she whispered softly before she bridged the gap between them and pressed her lips to his.

When they drew apart a few moments later, she reluctantly rose to her feet. "I've gotta go," she told him. "I've been playing hooky long enough."

"I guess it's lucky that Adam is so easy to take advantage of, huh?" Danny remarked with a grin.

"That doesn't mean it's ok!" Lindsay chided, her hands on her hips.

Danny chuckled. "I was kidding!" he said, holding up his hands in mock surrender.

"Well mostly anyway…" he added off her winged eyebrow. "You're always determined to think the worst of me," he complained after a beat.

Lindsay laughed. "And why _is_ that I wonder?" she asked.

"I have no idea," he told her, his face the picture of innocence.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah and is that a flying pig I see over there?" she returned.

"I could take offence at that," he called out after her as she turned to leave the room.

"So sue me," she shot back over her shoulder at him.

As she headed off down the corridor towards Adam and the AV Lab, Danny settled back against the sofa cushions with an inward smile. God, how had he ever lived without her, huh? She was his best friend and his lover all rolled into one. He'd never had that with any of the other women he'd dated – not even Rachel. He supposed that was what had made Lindsay 'the one' in the first place, but it was only now that he realised what a precious gift it was. It wasn't something he would ever forget again in a hurry that was for certain. From now on, he would appreciate what he had and make damn sure to cherish it until the day he died.

**OOOOOO**

_**The following day…**_

Lindsay stopped on the corner of the sidewalk and looked up at the street sign with a puzzled frown. When Danny had called her an hour or so earlier and asked her to meet him here rather than at the restaurant that they'd pre-arranged, she'd not been expecting their rendezvous to take place in a residential street in Brooklyn. On reflection, he _had _been rather evasive on the phone, but she'd assumed that was because he'd wanted to tell her about Bert's bequest in person.

"Hey Linds!"

She spun around and saw him waving at her from down the street. Adjusting her purse on her shoulder, she quickened her step to join him. "What are we doing here?" she asked after they'd exchanged a brief kiss hello.

"I figured we could have a picnic," he answered, holding up the blue plastic cool-box that he held in his right hand.

"In winter?" she remarked a little dubiously

"It's nearly spring," he argued back.

She laughed. "Danny - it's freezing out here!"

"So we should go in there," he said, indicating the house that they stood in front of.

"I think Mac might disapprove of us breaking and entering."

"Good thing I have a key then," he said as he jogged up the short flight of steps to the front door.

Lindsay remained at the bottom of the steps, not knowing what to make of this unexpected turn of events.

"Come on!" he urged her after he'd unlocked the door and pushed it open.

Still a little bemused, she ascended the stairs and stepped over the threshold into the narrow hallway. The floorboards beneath her feet were scuffed and pitted, but it was nothing that a good sanding and a new coat of varnish wouldn't fix. The condition of the walls pretty much matched that of the floor with the paintwork grubby and chipped in places. Despite the general air of neglect, the building did appear to be structurally sound however.

She turned to confront Danny as he came in behind her and shut the door against the late winter chill. "So - were you planning on explaining sometime soon?" she demanded.

He hesitated before replying, suddenly seeming a little nervous.

"Danny?" she prompted.

"The house belonged to Bert," he eventually told her. "And now it's ours… well, mine technically, but what's mine is yours so..." He lifted his shoulders in an offhand shrug.

Lindsay's eyes widened. "He left you a house?" she asked incredulously.

"Yeah, together with the beginnings of a college fund for Lucy and any other kids we might have."

Lindsay blew out her breath from between her lips. "I guess you were right to be concerned about what Anna would think then," she remarked.

Danny smiled. "Not really – this is only a fraction of the whole apparently."

"But a house, Danny!"

"I know - it is kind of overwhelming," he admitted. "We stayed here the night of 9/11 so I guess I understand why he left me this one rather than any of the others but…"

"Others?" Lindsay was even more stunned. "But he always seemed to live so frugally."

Danny nodded. "I knew he owned property though – I guess I never mentioned that, huh?"

Lindsay shook her head. "I think I would have remembered, so no, you didn't."

"He just didn't see money as all that important, I guess. Flashing the cash wasn't Bert's style at all. He worked hard to provide for his family but that was it."

"The place needs some work," he went on before she could say anything in response. "The attorney told me that it hasn't had any tenants for nearly six months now. The building's basically sound though. Why don't you take a look around and see what you think while I sort out lunch?"

"Are you suggesting that we should live here then?" Lindsay asked him.

"I guess that depends on whether it's somewhere you could consider home," Danny answered. He fished in his jacket pocket and drew out a sealed envelope. "This is for you," he added, holding it out to her.

"From Bert?" Tears pricked the back of Lindsay's eyelids as she took it from his outstretched hand.

Danny nodded. "Written just before Christmas if the letter he left for me is anything to go by."

"Okay." Lindsay held it to her chest, not knowing what else to say.

"I'll call you when lunch is ready," Danny decided. "Kitchen's back there." He indicated the door behind her. "The reception room is through there," he added, waving his hand at the door to his right before stepping around her and moving down the hallway towards the kitchen.

Left alone to her explorations, Lindsay went through into the sunlit lounge. She still couldn't quite get her head around it. It was obvious that the house had been deliberately kept as a family home rather than being split into separate apartments – something that probably didn't make all that much financial sense, but was typically Bert nonetheless. The room she was standing in was bare and without furniture – a blank canvas on which to build a home, she realised. Just how long had Bert intended this for them, she wondered?

She headed back out into the hallway and climbed the flight of stairs to the second floor. The bathroom lay directly ahead with one bedroom to the right and another two to the left. She peeked into the two smaller bedrooms first and was gratified to find them reasonably spacious. She then went through into the master suite. The carpet on the floor in here was threadbare, the paper on the walls peeling away in swathes. She moved to the window to look down into the building's small back-yard and was charmed to find a window seat to aid in her observations.

Sitting down, she turned her attention to the letter that she still held in her hands. '_Dear Lindsay,_' it began in Bert's looping script.

'_I know I've told you this before, but let me say again how glad I am that you and Danny have chosen to give your relationship a second chance. I hope with all my heart that you can find a way to work through your troubles and put your marriage back on track. _

_I have every confidence in your ability to do so because you remind me so much of my Molly at your age. She was smart, funny and beautiful in her own unique way too. She kept me in line whilst encouraging me to be everything that I wanted to be and a whole lot more besides. She was the love of my life and my very best friend. I don't think I always appreciated that – not in the beginning at least, but over time I eventually learned the value of her love – just as I think Danny is finally starting to realise the true value of yours. _

_I told him he was a fool to let you go, you know. I know he tried to sort things out with you, but he gave up the fight far too quickly in my opinion. You were hurting and it was up to him to reassure you. I know there was a lot more to your problems than that, but he could have showed a little more staying power – you both could have done in actual fact…'_

Lindsay broke off her reading with a helpless laugh. That was Bert to the core – he told it like it was regardless of the consequences.

'_But lecture over – you've both now seen the error of your ways and, from what I can tell, are working hard to build the future together that you always deserved. It takes a lot of courage to admit that you made a mistake and you've shown the true worth of the people you are by swallowing your pride and sticking with it. I am extremely proud of both of you for that. _

_And now to my last will and testament - Life is for the living, but I believe a home is part of what truly makes a family. That is why I have chosen to grant Danny this gift. Right now this house is nothing but an empty shell, and only you and he can decide whether it works as a home for the two of you and little Lucy. If not, then sell it with my blessing and find the place that does. _

_I won't be offended. It is meant as a stepping stone to wherever you want your lives to lead. All I ask of you is that you cherish what you have and remember your old friend Bert from time-to-time. Danny and I met in the worst of circumstances, but it was a friendship that kept me young and one which I hope taught him a few things about being a man and most importantly for you, a husband. He never met my Molly but she's been with me in spirit all these years. I've told him many things – they may have seemed like meaningless anecdotes to him, but they were lessons in the art of marriage whether he realised it or not. _

_I wouldn't say Molly and I had the perfect relationship, but it was strong and sustaining and – apart from our daughter Anna – the greatest achievement of both our lives. I know you and Danny have it in you to make the same success of your own marriage. You've already proved you have the necessary perseverance, now you just need to learn to trust in each other and have faith in the love that you so obviously share. Do that and it'll all come right in the end, I'm sure of it._

_Now my wonderful girl – it's finally time for me to say a fond goodbye. Take care of my boy and that gorgeous little girl of yours for me and make sure they take care of you too!_

_All my love, in this life and the next, Bert x_'

"He has a way with words, huh?" Danny said from the doorway as she wiped away the tears from her cheeks.

Lindsay nodded. "I don't remember him being so eloquent in real life."

Danny chuckled. "No, I think those letters must have taken him ages to write." He paused a moment. "Well, lunch is ready – I called but I guess you were too absorbed to hear me."

Lindsay nodded and rose to her feet. "You okay?" she asked him.

"Sure – why?"

"I don't know; you seem a little tense. I guess it's been an emotional morning for you, huh?"

Danny let out a rather strained laugh. "You could say that, yes."

He shook his head at her when she shot him a concerned look. "Come on, let's go and eat." He took her hand and led her determinedly from the room, but she could feel the slight tremor in his fingers that belied his outwardly confident demeanour.

"I don't remember it being this difficult last time," he remarked somewhat ruefully as they paused outside the kitchen doorway. Before she could respond, he shook off his brief moment of indecision, placed his hand against the small of her back and firmly steered her inside.

Lindsay gasped at the sight that greeted her. The small table in the centre of the room was covered with a white linen tablecloth and set with a spread that was more worthy of a French bistro than 2-storey, 3-bed house in Brooklyn, New York. There was a freshly-baked crusty baguette, a tub of rich-looking cream cheese along with a plate of smoked salmon and a colourful bowl of dressed salad.

Her eyes widened as Danny pulled a bottle from the cool-box on the counter. "Champagne?" she asked.

"Not quite," he told her with a wry grin. "Budget didn't stretch that far. Sparkling wine though – nearly as good…"

"If not better," Lindsay said as she shrugged out of her coat and sat down at the table. "I've always found champagne a little dry myself."

Danny laughed. "You're a philistine!"

"No, I just like what I like." She cocked her head to one side as he poured the bubbling liquid into her waiting glass. "So what's this in aid of?" she asked him.

"I figured we deserved a little treat," he told her. "The last couple of weeks haven't exactly been a laugh a minute, have they?"

"You know I understand why – there wasn't any need for you to make it up to me."

"I know," he said, "But I wanted to."

She studied him for a moment and then shook her head. "No, there's got to be more to it than that," she declared. "What did you mean 'I don't remember it being this difficult last time'?"

He stared at her, his glass halfway to his lips. "Can't you contain that innate curiosity of yours long enough for us to eat first?" he demanded in an exasperated tone.

"No, not when there's obviously something you're not telling me."

"All right, okay, I'll probably enjoy the food more if I get it over with anyway," he decided.

He shifted his chair nearer to hers and reached out to take her hand. "Remember the last picnic we had?" he asked her.

A crease appeared on Lindsay's forehead as she tried to recall.

"In Montana, when we were staying with your Mom and Dad?" he reminded her.

"Oh." Lindsay's mouth went dry as she suddenly realised the direction in which this conversation was headed. She wasn't sure whether this was really the right time for it, but didn't know how to deter him without causing offence.

"Well, I was thinking about it last night," Danny continued, oblivious to her sudden panic.

"Last night?" Lindsay interrupted sharply; wanting to make sure her ears weren't deceiving her.

"Yeah," he said, shooting her a quizzical look. "Why'd you ask?"

She shrugged. "No reason," she told him offhandedly, although inside she couldn't have been more relieved. So he'd been considering this before he'd received Bert's bequest then, it was somehow incredibly important to her that he had. She wanted it to be his own decision, not because Bert's last letter to him had told him that he'd be a fool if he let her slip through his fingers a second time. Given the content of her own letter, it'd be a minor miracle if Danny's hadn't contained similar sentiments in respect of the two of them and their future.

Her fears allayed, she relaxed and shot him an encouraging smile. "Go on."

"Well, I was thinking about the promise that I made to you back then and how we explained things to Lucy when we first got back together too…"

"And?" Lindsay prompted when he lost his train of thought for a moment. She suppressed a smile. He was nervous, god bless him. She would almost say it was cute – except that wasn't really an adjective that you could apply to a man like Danny Messer. Hot maybe, sexy even, but cute? No.

"So I figured I'd been kind of remiss yesterday when we talked about moving back in together," he continued once he'd composed himself. "Luckily, Bert leaving us this house provided me with the perfect opportunity to correct that."

"Correct what?" she asked him softly.

"You know what," he returned, his voice taking on a gravel-like quality.

Her lips quirked. "Maybe I do, but don't think I'm gonna make it easy for you, buddy."

"Do you ever?" he quipped and then laughed. "Okay then – here goes – third time lucky, I guess."

To her delight, he slid from his seat as he reached into his jean's pocket. "You'll get your pants all dirty," she told him, "The floor's filthy."

"Shut up and let me do this, woman," he growled.

She giggled. "Oh god! Now _I'm_ nervous."

"So I was thinking," he told her almost conversationally. "About when we move in here… or some place else if you'd prefer - I was thinking about whether you'd consider doing so as husband and wife?"

"Well, I guess that depends," she said slowly, not able to resist the temptation to tease him even though her heart was doing loop-the-loops inside her chest.

"On what?" he asked warily.

"On whether I get a better offer or not."

"Lindsay!"

She laughed and leaned forward in her chair to hook her arms around his neck as he knelt on the floor in front of her. "Just kidding. My answer's yes – on both counts."

"Seriously?" His face was wreathed with naked delight.

"You sound surprised – did you think I'd say no?"

"Well, not to the proposal obviously."

"Obviously," she echoed sardonically, and then squealed in protest as he promptly pulled her out of her chair and down onto the floor with him.

"I meant I wasn't sure how you'd feel about us living here," he said as she settled astride his lap.

"It's what you want, isn't it?"

"Yes, but is it what _you_ want?"

She smiled. "I definitely think we could make it work for us, yes."

"You sure?" he double-checked.

"I'm sure," she assured him.

"Good," he said, and then gently took her left hand in his and returned her Tiffany engagement ring to its rightful place.

"It looks weird," she commented as she held up her hand to admire the dazzling effect of the diamond solitaire as it twinkled brightly on her finger.

"Why?"

"I've never worn it without my wedding band before."

"Well, we're doing things properly this time around, aren't we?" he said, "Which is why I think we should renew our wedding vows too."

Lindsay nodded. "I'd like that," she told him sincerely before her lips curled up into an impish grin. "So, is this going to be a long engagement?" she enquired playfully.

Danny smiled. Considering that they were still legally married, their engagement was more of a symbolic gesture than a promise of the permanent union yet to come. "Tell you what - how about we say that when we move into this place, we'll do so as Mr and Mrs Messer, huh?"

She smiled. "Works for me. It could take a few months to get it properly habitable though."

"I know, but baby steps have been working for us so far, so why change a winning formula?"

"Why indeed?" Lindsay said, and then frowned as something occurred to her. "Are you sure we can afford the mortgage on this place?" she asked him.

"It's paid off, Linds," Danny told her quietly.

"All of it?"

"Every last cent."

"Oh!" Lindsay's eyes filled with emotion. "Oh, I love that man so much."

"Yeah," Danny agreed hoarsely, "Me too."

Choked up with emotion that he wasn't sure what to do with, he threaded his fingers through her hair and pulled her face down to his, finding the outlet he needed in the sweet familiar passion of her kiss. Lindsay responded with enthusiasm, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her body against his as their mouths moved harmoniously together in tender rhapsody. As a consequence, they were both decidedly breathless when they eventually drew apart.

"Okay," Danny drawled after a rather deliberate clearing of his throat. "So maybe we should eat before I give into the urge to ravish you right here, right now on this dusty old floor."

"All right." Lindsay giggled and obligingly shifted off his lap so that they could resume their seats at the table. "Not that I object to the idea of you making love to me on our kitchen floor, you understand," she went on as he held out her chair for her, "But perhaps it might be more enjoyable once we've had the flooring replaced."

Danny laughed as he took his own seat. "Sounds like a plan." He lifted his glass. "Let's drink to that, huh?"

Lindsay nodded. "To kitchen floor sex," she said and clinked her glass against his.

"Most couples toast their engagement, you know," Danny pointed out.

"Yeah, but we're not most couples, are we?" Lindsay returned with a grin.

"I'm not sure that's anything to be proud of," he told her with a laugh and then surveyed the food in front of him. "I was trying to be romantic here," he complained.

"I know and I appreciate the gesture, honestly I do." She reached out to lace her fingers through his. "Sorry – I ruined your perfect proposal, didn't I?"

He shook his head. "No – all that hearts and flowers stuff is not really us, is it? You made it real. You made it us." He picked up a slice of bread, spread it with cream cheese and topped it with a slice of smoked salmon. "Eat," he said, holding it up to her lips.

She bit down obediently, allowing him to feed her before she took the food from him to finish it off while he tucked into his own lunch.

"You really did push the boat out, didn't you?" she remarked when he brought out fresh, juicy strawberries and rich chocolate truffles for dessert.

"Only the best for my girl," Danny said as he delicately fed her one of each.

She rewarded him with a chocolate and strawberry-flavoured kiss before returning the favour. They continued to exchange sweet treats in this vein until the resultant sugar rush and their stirred libidos finally forced them to stop. Maybe they weren't the hearts and flowers-type, Danny thought wryly to himself, but they sure as hell knew how to push each other's sensual buttons.

"Where did you put the box for my ring?" Lindsay asked after she'd made his breath quicken with yet another slow, sultry kiss.

"Here," he said, retrieving it from his jean's pocket and handing it to her.

"Hey! What you doin'?" he demanded when she slid the ring from her finger and returned it to its ubiquitous blue box.

"We said we'd talk to Lucy on Saturday when we have more time," she reminded him. "It's important that she's the first to know, so this engagement's going to have to be our little secret for now, okay?"

"I'll wear it in private," she added by way of further incentive.

"Just the ring and nothing else?" he enquired cheekily.

She lowered her eyelashes coyly. "If you play your cards right, yeah," she promised.

"Is it strange that I find that ridiculously sexy?" he said.

"Yes, but I always knew you were slightly odd."

"Hey!" he protested.

Lindsay laughed and slid from her chair into his lap. "You don't really mind, do you?" she asked, stroking her fingers through his short, spiky hair.

"I mind, but I understand why it has to be that way. Once Lucy knows, it stays where it belongs though, okay?"

"Of course," she agreed. "That's where we're all gonna stay..."

Leaning forward, she nuzzled her lips tantalisingly against his. "Where we belong..."

_**To be continued… :-)**_


	47. To Love and to Cherish

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hiya! New chapter for you. Sorry about the wait. Real life is a bit haphazard at the moment so my updating unfortunately is as well. Anyway, hope you enjoy :-)

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 47 – To Love and to Cherish**_

_**Messer apartment, Saturday, around 2PM…**_

Lindsay was sorting through a second basket of laundry when she finally heard the scrape of Danny's key in the lock on Saturday afternoon. His shift had been due to finish at noon, but he'd called her late morning to let her know that he was going to be late. As they were due to have their all-important talk with Lucy when he got home, she hoped that whatever he had to get finished wouldn't drag on for too long because she really didn't want to put it off any longer.

She'd endured a trying morning with her daughter so far. Lucy, who was normally such an independent little soul, had demanded her attention almost constantly, making it virtually impossible for Lindsay to get on with her chores. Finally persuaded to play without her mother's direct supervision, the little girl was currently ensconced at the kitchen table with her colouring book and crayons, although Lindsay had no idea how long this relative peace would last. With the timely return of her husband/fiancé, hopefully she wouldn't have to find out.

"Hey babe!" he greeted her as he shrugged out of his leather jacket and tossed it onto the coat stand near the door. "How's it goin'?"

"Well, put it this way - I'm glad that you're finally home."

Danny ran his fingers through his short, spiky hair in a gesture of fatherly concern. "That bad, huh?" he enquired.

Lindsay let out a deep sigh. "It's just that I'm not used to her being so clingy that's all. It's pretty exhausting to tell you the truth. I want my happy little girl back."

"Well, let's see what we can do about achieving that, yeah?" Danny suggested. "We're living on borrowed time anyway," he went on, "Because I swear Stella is on to us. She's been asking all sorts of searching questions this morning, and I can only dodge them for so long before she manages to torture the truth outta me."

Lindsay smiled at his rueful tone. She suspected that she and Danny had been emitting some sort of post-engagement glow for the past couple of days and Stella – with her razor-sharp intuition - had obviously picked up on that. "She doesn't miss a trick that one," she observed dryly.

"Tell me about it," Danny said with a roll of his eyes. "I felt like I was the one under the microscope not our evidence."

Lindsay laughed. "But you stayed strong though?" she enquired playfully. "Didn't squeal on us?"

Danny grinned. "Don't worry, the cat's still in the bag," he confirmed with a conspiratorial wink before he changed the subject to more serious matters. "So - where's your ring?" he asked her.

"In the top drawer of the dresser in our room," she told him.

He nodded. "All right so I'll go get that while you round up the munchkin, okay?"

As Danny headed off in the direction of the bedroom, Lindsay wandered into the kitchen to fetch Lucy. "Is Daddy home yet?" the little girl asked, setting down her crayon and looking enquiringly at her mother.

Lindsay nodded in confirmation. "Yes – didn't you hear him come in just now?"

Lucy's expression brightened. "Will he play 'Hungry Hippos' with me?" she demanded. "I don't wanna draw no more."

"Maybe later, sweetie," her mother returned absently. "Mommy and Daddy want to have a talk with you first."

To Lindsay's horror, Lucy's big blue eyes immediately filled with tears. "No Mommy!" she wailed. "No talks! I don't like talks."

"Hey, hey honey, don't cry, it's all right," Lindsay crooned, stepping forward and instinctively reaching out towards her crying child.

Lucy shook her head, her voice rising hysterically. "No! No! No talks, Mommy. No talks!"

Breaking into heart-wrenching sobs, the little girl slid from her chair, zigzagged around her mother like a lightning bolt and then dashed down the hallway towards her bedroom as fast as her little legs would carry her.

"Lucy! Wait!" Lindsay called out as she took off after her fleeing daughter.

Not looking where she was going, she collided with Danny as he emerged from their bedroom, the ring-box he'd gone to retrieve held tightly in his right hand.

"Whoa! Where's the fire?" he exclaimed, reaching out with his free hand to steady her before she fell back on her butt from the impact. He frowned at the distressed look on her face. "What's the matter?"

"I don't know!" Lindsay said, wringing her hands as her anxiety levels rose. "I told her we wanted to talk and she just burst into tears and ran off."

"Okay, deep breaths," Danny instructed, catching her by the shoulders and taking charge of the situation before she could descend into blind panic.

She leaned her forehead against the solid wall of his chest as he ran his hands soothingly up-and-down her spine. "Look, it's not as if we don't know that she's worried about something," he said into her hair, "The sooner we find out what it is, the sooner we can sort it out, okay?"

"I know, I know," Lindsay said, sucking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly to quieten her agitated nerves. "I just hate seeing her so upset that's all."

Danny pressed a kiss into her hair. "We both do, babe, but you need to stay calm for Lucy's sake, all right?"

Lindsay nodded and continued to breathe slowly in and out until she finally felt her anxiety begin to recede. Sliding a couple of his fingers under her chin, Danny lifted her face to his when he sensed that she'd more or less composed herself. "Ready?" he asked her.

She gave him an imperceptible nod in reply, which he responded to by dropping a reassuring kiss on her upturned lips. Stepping back, he took her hand in his so that they could go seek out their distressed daughter together.

Lucy was nowhere to be found when they first entered her room, but the sound of muffled sobbing coming from the closet soon clued them into her whereabouts. Her maternal instincts kicking in, Lindsay hurried over, pulled open the slatted door and knelt down on the floor in front of her little girl. Lucy was sitting hunched up with her stuffed bunny, Molly clutched protectively to her chest and her eyes red-rimmed and swollen from her tears. Lindsay just wanted to take her in her arms and make it all better, but knew that she had to tread carefully until they discovered what was wrong.

"Tell Mommy why you're so upset, sweetheart," she urged, reaching out to gently brush away the strands of hair that were sticking to her daughter's tear-stained cheeks.

"I-I w-want to st-stay h-here," Lucy hiccupped.

Lindsay frowned, not understanding. "In the closet?" she questioned

Lucy shook her head. "N-no… I want M-mommy and Lucy to stay h-here wiv D-daddy," she said, bursting into noisy sobs again. "Pease Mommy – I want you and me to stay here wiv Daddy!"

"Oh baby – come here!" Reaching into the closet, Lindsay lifted her little girl out and settled her on her lap. "We're not going anywhere, I promise."

"We're not?" Lucy looked up at her hopefully, her blue eyes still brimming with salty moisture but the tears no longer spilling down her cheeks.

"No, we're not," Lindsay assured her, pressing a heartfelt kiss to each of her little girl's flushed cheeks. "Is that what you thought me and Daddy wanted to talk to you about?"

Lucy nodded miserably. "S-so you don't w-want to talk 'bout bad fings?" she enquired tremulously.

Lindsay shot a helpless look at Danny, who shifted closer and ran a comforting hand over their daughter's cap of soft, silky hair in response. "Not today, pumpkin," he told her quietly. "Today we're only going to talk about good things, okay?"

"Really good fings?" Lucy asked him, her tears finally beginning to dry up.

"Yeah – really good things," Danny confirmed and then shifted position with an exaggerated grimace, "But do you think we could do that somewhere a little more comfortable, huh? Daddy's getting way too old to sit on the floor all the time."

"Okay." Lucy nodded in sombre agreement, still not quite herself enough to giggle at his joke as he'd hoped. Instead, she kept her arms locked tightly around her mother's neck, forcing Lindsay to carry her down the hallway to the lounge. Under normal circumstances, she would have insisted that the little girl walked, however today she allowed the overly dependent behaviour, knowing that Lucy needed the added reassurance of her embrace right now.

The three of them settled on the sofa, Lucy still cuddled up on Lindsay's lap, but significantly happier now that her worst fears had been more or less appeased. "Are me and Mommy really staying with you, Daddy?" she asked again, just to be certain.

"You sure are, peanut," he assured her.

"Forever and ever?"

Danny smiled. "That's the general idea, yeah."

"And you an' Mommy won't fight no more?"

"Ahh…" Danny hesitated before replying, wanting to answer in the affirmative but knowing in all honesty that he couldn't. "I wish I could promise you that, sweetheart, but Mommy and Daddy will probably still get cross with each other from time to time."

"Why?"

"Because families do get angry with each other every so often," Lindsay cut in gently. "Sometimes you and me get cross with each other, don't we?"

Lucy nodded solemnly. "Mommy gets cross when I naughty," she agreed, "And I gets cross when Mommy wants me to do somefing I don't want to do."

Lindsay bit back a smile at this, something her fiancé didn't quite manage. She frowned at him in censure, but he just grinned impudently back at her. She shook her head in exasperation and then turned her attention back to her daughter. "But that doesn't mean we don't still love each other, does it?" she said to Lucy.

The little girl shook her head. "No – we says sorry and then we have hugs and kisses to make it all better again."

"Exactly."

"But you and Daddy stayed angry when you fighted before," Lucy pointed out, her eyes wide and anxious at the possibility of a repeat performance.

"Yes, we did, that's true," Lindsay said, stroking the backs of her fingers over her daughter's soft cheek. "But that's because sorry is sometimes a very hard word to say, especially when you're a grown-up and your arguments are about grown-up things."

"Like yours an' Daddy's was?"

Lindsay nodded. "Like mine and Daddy's were, yes," she confirmed, "Which is why we've been going to visit a counsellor ever since we decided that we wanted to be together again…"

"What's a cownsler?" Lucy cut in, struggling a little with the alien word.

"A counsellor is a special kind of doctor who helps people who love each other to say sorry properly," her mother explained as simply as she could. "They also help them to talk to each other in the right way so that they don't fight so much afterwards."

Lucy's forehead creased in concentration as she absorbed this difficult concept. "So you and Daddy are all healed now?" she enquired after a beat.

Lindsay shot Danny a wistful look. "Maybe not completely, not yet anyway, but we're a whole lot better than we used to be…"

"And because of that, we've decided that the time is finally right for the three of us to live together as a family again," Danny finished for her.

"Here in Daddy's apartment?" Lucy asked him.

"For a little while, yes," her father told her, "But then we're all going to move into our new place – a house that Uncle Bert gave us as a special present. Isn't that cool?"

Lucy nodded enthusiastically, her natural exuberance gradually reasserting itself. "Can I have a fairy princess room?" she asked eagerly.

Danny reached out and tweaked her nose. "I think that can probably be arranged," he agreed with a smile.

"An'… an' you an' Mommy – you no d'vorce no more?"

Danny slid his hand into Lindsay's and she smiled warmly at him as he lifted their joined hands to his lips and pressed a kiss to the back of her knuckles. They'd gone to see their respective lawyers the previous day, at long last instructing them to withdraw the official petition for divorce. After the offending papers had been metaphorically torn in two, it was as if a ten-tonne weight had been lifted from their shoulders. It was a burden that they hadn't realised they were still carrying until it was no longer there.

"No, we're not getting divorced," Danny told his daughter, who squealed in delight at this news. "In fact," he went on, producing the ring box from his jeans pocket with a flourish. "Me and Mommy made a very special promise to each other a few days ago. We decided that we wanted to marry each other again too. This ring is a symbol of that promise," he explained as he took Lindsay's hand in his and slid the diamond solitaire onto her finger where it belonged.

"Oh wow, Mommy!" Lucy exclaimed, her little hands cupping her cheeks in childish wonder. "Look, it's so pretty! It sparkles!" She beamed a mega-watt smile at her mother. "You have a princess ring and Daddy's your prince!"

Lindsay laughed at this analogy. "Hmm… I can't really see Daddy in breeches and a plumed hat somehow," she remarked, tongue-in-cheek. "He would look rather silly, don't you think?"

Lucy giggled. "He doesn't hafta wear a prince outfit if he doesn't want to," she said.

"Well, that's a relief," Danny remarked with a chuckle.

"But Mommy is going to wear a princess dress isn't she?" the little girl went on.

"Err…" Lindsay didn't know what to say to that. She looked at Danny for back-up, but he was studying her with a glint of speculation in his blue eyes. Her heart stuttered inside her chest.

"We could, you know," he said.

"Danny!" she protested.

"Are you saying that you don't feel like you missed out last time? Not even a little bit?" he asked her.

She sighed. "Well, maybe a little," she reluctantly conceded, "But a big fancy wedding? I know it's a lot of women's life-long dream but it'd be my worst nightmare."

"So we'll keep it small and intimate then – just family and a few close friends. You could handle that couldn't you?"

"I guess that wouldn't be so bad," she admitted with a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

"Such enthusiasm," he remarked with a touch of asperity in his tone.

"You really want to do this?" she asked him then.

He nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah - you know what? I think I do."

There was a beat of silence as Lindsay considered. "Okay then, let's do it," she finally decided, but not before Danny had suffered a thousand agonies in the interim.

"Really Mommy?" Lucy's eyes had gone as wide as saucers.

Lindsay smiled her wide, beautiful smile. "Yes really. I'll need a flower girl though – any idea where I might find one of those?"

"Me! Me!" Lucy said, raising her arm high in the air as if she were in class. "I can do it, Mommy! I can do it!"

Lindsay tapped her bottom lip thoughtfully while her daughter waited on tenterhooks for her verdict. "Well, I don't know – it's a very important job," she teased. "Are you sure you're up to it?"

"Yes Mommy! I am! I am!" Lucy said earnestly. "I be the best flower girl ever, I promise!"

"Well in that case…" She paused. "I mean if you're really sure you're going to be the best ever?" she checked.

"I am, Mommy! I am!" Lucy bounced on her mother's lap unable to contain the unbearable excitement.

Lindsay looked over at Danny. "What do we think, Daddy? Do we think she can do it?"

Clasping her hands together in front of her chest, Lucy shot her father a pleading look, mute with anticipation now. Danny wanted to laugh at the fact that she was even considering the possibility that they might say no – however, being the pushover he so often was in regard to his little girl, he hadn't the heart to tease her further. "I think we should give her a shot, yeah," he concluded solemnly.

Lucy's head immediately swivelled back to her mother, knowing her word was the one that really mattered in this instance. Lindsay laughed and bent her head to kiss her daughter on the lips. "Of course you can be my flower-girl, sweetie," she finally relented. "I wouldn't have anyone else."

"Yay!" Lucy squealed, making their ears ring. Sliding down from her mother's lap, she began to jump around and then wriggled her hips and boogied in celebration.

"Well, someone's happy again," Danny remarked with a smile.

Lindsay shot him a quelling look. "I don't think one conversation is suddenly going to make everything better again, Danny," she said critically. "You did hear how many times she checked that we were really going to stay together, didn't you?"

He nodded. "I know, but I'm thinking the wedding will help to make her feel a little more secure about things. You know how into her fairy princesses she is – and what happens after the wedding in all those stories, huh?"

"The happily-ever-after," Lindsay said unnecessarily.

"Precisely," he said as if that was the answer to everything.

"Except the fairy-tale ending doesn't happen quite so easily in real life, does it?" Lindsay pointed out. "And I don't think we should be doing this just to make Lucy happy either."

"We're not," Danny reassured her, reaching out to squeeze her hand. "I want this too, I promise you. Before, I didn't think it mattered how you did it, just as long as you made the commitment and got the legal piece of paper to prove it."

"And now you think differently?"

"And now I think that it's something that I want to do surrounded by my family and closest friends. And I want a photograph to mark the occasion – one of the two of us all dressed up – a permanent reminder of the commitment that we made to each other. You look at all those old photos from centuries ago and what are most of them of, huh? People's wedding days - precious moments in time captured and preserved in print so that history remembers you after you're gone. They're the proof that you lived, the evidence that you loved."

"Well, when you put it like that, how could I ever say no?" Lindsay said, tears sparking in her eyes.

"You can't."

She smiled. "Just no meringues and we do it our way with no outside interference, okay?"

Danny grinned. "By that you mean my mother's, I assume?" he said wryly, understanding immediately where she was coming from.

Lindsay nodded in agreement. "And mine too," she added.

Danny laughed. "Get out – my Mom was born to interfere, but yours is a regular sweetheart."

"Uh-huh, think again," Lindsay said with a shake of her head. "Both she and my sister ditched the halos for horns when Mel got married. It was not a pretty sight, believe me. I seriously considered leaving the country until it was all over."

Danny chuckled as Lucy came bounding back towards them. "What colour flower girl dress will I wear, Mommy?" she asked.

"Well, I don't know yet," Lindsay told her. "We'll have to go shopping to see what there is to choose from, won't we?"

Lucy nodded her head vigorously. "Can we go tomorrow?" she predictably asked.

"Uhh… I think Mommy and Daddy need to decide when our wedding is going to be first," Lindsay replied. "It won't be very good if you're wearing a summer dress and it's all snowy outside will it?"

Lucy shook her head. "No, I gets cold."

"Exactly," Lindsay said, hoping that would be enough to close the subject for the time being. She should have known better however.

"So when will you have decided?" Lucy demanded.

Danny laughed and reached out to dig his daughter gently in the ribs. "You're like a dog with a bone, aren't ya, huh?" he said.

Lucy giggled and squirmed away from him. "But I wanna know!" she protested.

"Two weeks," Lindsay said, plucking an arbitrary figure from her head.

"But that's_ for-ever_!"

"You're going to have to learn some patience then, aren't you?" Lindsay said unsympathetically. As much as she loved and adored her daughter, she didn't intend to let the little girl walk all over her. If she had to pick out the best piece of advice that her mother had given her about parenthood then it would be that consistency in discipline was the key.

"Start how you mean to go on," Elizabeth had told her. "Prevention is better than cure. If you lay out the ground rules from the very beginning then when she gets older and starts to exercise her independence a bit more, she'll already understand the standards of behaviour that you expect from her. Let her get away with too much when she's young and there'll be hell to pay later, trust me."

Knowing she was beat, Lucy looked towards her father for support. Unfortunately for her, he knew which side his bread was buttered so she was met with a solid brick wall. "Don't look at me," he said, "You know Mommy's the boss."

Lucy pouted but soon got over it. "Can I go play in my room now?" she asked them.

Lindsay nodded. "Of course you can, sweetie," she said and then smiled as she watched her little girl scamper happily off.

"So is that why you're so anti big weddings then?" Danny asked, returning to their earlier topic of conversation. "Because of what it was like when your sister got married?"

"Partly," Lindsay replied before dropping her gaze to her lap. "That's not the main reason though," she admitted quietly. "I just can't bear the thought of everyone looking at me. After the shooting, I couldn't go anywhere without being an object of public scrutiny. There were eyes boring into me from everywhere I turned and I just couldn't escape them. I felt like I was in a room with all the walls closing in on me. It was suffocating."

She sighed and lifted her gaze back to his face. "I know as a bride you're supposed to revel in being the centre of attention, but for me, it'd be an ordeal rather than a joy." She shrugged. "It's silly, I know."

"I don't think it's silly," Danny told her gently. "I think it's perfectly understandable after what you went through. Are you sure you're comfortable with us doing this? I mean if you're not…"

He stopped as Lindsay placed a quelling finger over his lips. "I'm sure," she said. "It's different when you're sharing it with the people you love. Mel didn't even know some of the people at her wedding though – some friends of Paul's cousins attended and he barely even knew them himself. I mean how crazy is that?"

"You won't be the centre of attention at our wedding anyway," Danny told her.

An eyebrow winged its way up her forehead at this. "I won't?"

"No, I mean there's the ultra-hot groom that you'll have to share the limelight with…" He winked at her as she scoffed and rolled her eyes at his show of male arrogance. "Not to mention the scene-stealing flower-girl," he added with a grin.

Lindsay laughed. "Oh God, she's gonna be an utter nightmare, isn't she?" she said.

Danny shook his head. "Nah - she's gonna be as gorgeous as her Mom is beautiful - which - incidentally - makes me a very lucky man."

Lindsay was struck by just how far they'd come then. It hadn't been difficult for her to admit her phobia about being the centre of attention to him. It had seemed perfectly natural in actual fact. Before, the words would have lodged in the back of her throat and have been left unspoken, possibly leaving him with the impression that her reluctance was somehow due to him. Their marriage had mainly broken down because of their lack of effective communication, but they'd undergone a complete one-eighty over the past few months. Now communication was what made them strong.

"Hey! What's the matter?" Danny asked when she found herself suddenly overcome with emotion.

"Nothing!" she choked out. "They're happy tears, I swear."

She moved effortlessly into his arms and he clasped her tightly against him, surrounding her with the comforting warmth of his love. "A year ago I thought I'd never be happy again," she told him emotionally. "I'd made the biggest mistake of my life and I didn't know how to fix it. I didn't even think it _was_ fixable."

Danny turned his face into her hair. "You broke my heart, but I never really stopped loving you, you know," he said. "Not deep inside where it counted anyway. But I had to take some of the blame for situation we'd gotten ourselves into and I thought that moving on was the best thing for us at the time. I figured there was no going back so why even try? It would only hurt more in the end."

He sighed. "I was wrong about that – I think I knew that the moment you broke down in front of me, admitted your regret over our split. But I was still angry at your initial refusal to try and work things out and it took some time for me to get over that. I think we've proved that we have something that endures now though. We could have walked away, but we didn't. It took us a while to get our act together, but we made the effort and we've earned the rewards. We deserve to be happy – I truly believe that."

"Yeah, me too," Lindsay sniffed.

Danny drew back and palmed her face in his hands. "Are you sure?" he asked, his steady gaze holding hers captive so that she couldn't look away.

She knew what he was asking – had she really let go of that sense that she was somehow undeserving because she'd lived, because she'd escaped with her life when four others had lost theirs? That kind of seismic shift in thinking wasn't going to occur overnight, not when she'd been holding onto it for over ten years. And yet, right in this moment, she did honestly believe that they deserved to be happy.

"Today I do," she said, "Can't say the same about tomorrow, mind," she added.

"One day at a time, huh?" he suggested and then smiled. "But today's progress, huh?"

"Yeah," she agreed with a soft answering smile. "I guess it is."

"So," Danny said after a long reflective pause, "Who are we going to call first – your parents or mine?"

"Mine," Lindsay decided, "We can tell yours when we see them tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Danny queried.

"Your Mom called earlier – she's invited us for lunch."

"And you said we'd go?"

"Well, she is kind of hard to say no to," Lindsay told him ruefully.

Danny laughed. "Ain't that the truth," he remarked, "What about Mac and Stella and the rest of the guys?"

"They can wait until Monday."

Danny grinned. "Stella's gonna love that!"

"Well, you know what they say about sticky-beaks, don't you?" Lindsay said airily.

Danny cocked his head to one side. "No - what?" he enquired.

"Curiosity killed the cat," she told him, and then flashed him a wide, wicked grin.

He laughed. "I so love you," he declared.

"Truly?" she asked, all wide-eyed and breathless.

"Truly," he returned, too distracted to realise the trap that he was walking right into.

"Good," she said, abruptly standing up. "That means you won't mind folding the rest of the laundry for me then."

Giggling in delight, she nimbly danced out of the way as he reached out to swipe her on the butt in retaliation. "Gotcha!" she taunted over her shoulder as she went to find her cell to call her family.

"You'll pay for that!" he warned her.

"Bite me!" she returned, unconcerned by the threat.

Needless to say, Danny - after a few choice grumbles under his breath - got on with the mischievously delegated chore anyway because he figured it was a price worth paying for the goodwill of the woman he loved. He was a lucky guy and this time around he wouldn't forget it.

**OOOOOO**

_**Sunday 11.45PM….**_

"Nervous?" Danny asked Lindsay as they approached the door of his parent's house in Staten Island late the following morning.

"A little," she admitted as he lifted Lucy up so that she could press the door-bell to announce their presence.

"I don't think that there's any risk that they'll disapprove," he told her with a smile.

"Maybe not about us renewing our vows, but the kind of ceremony we have in mind?" Lindsay shrugged. "You could tell my Mom was a little disappointed that we were planning on keeping it small and simple."

The only thing that Danny had received from Elizabeth Monroe the previous day was warm and genuine congratulations so he figured she'd quickly gotten over her so-called disappointment - just as he knew his own parents would. Ultimately, all their families really wanted was for the two of them to be happy again.

The door opened to reveal his father and Lucy responded by bounding over the threshold and affectionately wrapping her arms around his legs. "Hi Grandpa!" she chirped.

"Hey poppet!" he said, smiling down at her.

"Guess what?" she said excitedly.

"What?"

"Daddy gave Mommy a sparkly ring and I'm gonna be a flower-girl!"

"Oh!" Michael Messer looked a little taken-aback for the moment and then smiled broadly as the meaning of his granddaughter's statement sank in. "Well, that's good news, yeah?"

Lucy nodded. "I'm gonna tell Nonna," she said and sped off down the hallway towards the kitchen to do just that.

Danny shot his father a sheepish look. "Not exactly how we intended to break the news," he remarked.

Michael laughed. "I imagine not but congratulations to you both anyway."

"Thanks Dad," Danny said as they exchanged a hug and a typically masculine slap on the back.

Michael moved to kiss Lindsay on both cheeks. "So a proper wedding this time, huh?" he enquired as he stepped back.

His question remained unanswered however, because at that moment, Rosa burst out the kitchen with a beaming Lucy on her heels. "Is it true?" she demanded, hope springing eternal in her eyes.

"Yeah Ma, it's true," her son confirmed.

"Oh my darling boy!"

"Ma!" Danny protested as she drew him into a perfumed and somewhat soggy hug.

"And you – you wonderful girl!" Rosa declared as she turned her attention to her soon-to-be re-established daughter-in-law.

Lindsay smiled. "I decided he was worth the effort after all," she quipped as she returned the older woman's embrace.

"And you're having a real wedding this time," Rosa went on delightedly.

"We had a real wedding last time, Ma," Danny told her reproachfully. "And we're keeping it small," he continued, intent on reining in his mother's legendary enthusiasm from the start. "We're not planning on inviting a cast of thousands – just immediate family and a few close friends, all right?"

"Did I say I was expecting anything else?" Rosa retorted.

"No, but I know you. You'd have us having a big Hollywood production like Cousin Selena if you got your way."

"Danny," Lindsay gently chided, understanding his brusqueness was on her behalf, but feeling that maybe he could have been a little more diplomatic about it.

"We want it to be about the vows we're renewing," she told Rosa, "And a big, lavish ceremony takes away from that somehow – well, it does for me anyway. That kind of wedding might be right for some women, but it's never been something that I wanted - even as a little girl. It's not about being a bride for me, you see, it's about becoming a wife and that's what I want my wedding to focus on. Exchanging those vows in front of the people who matter most in the world to me feels like the best way to do that. I'd be too self-conscious in front of people I didn't know so well."

"Honey – you should have the wedding you want, of course you should." Rosa said, and then shot her son a mildly fulminating look. "We _are_ at least invited this time, I assume?"

Danny nodded. "I've learned the error of my ways," he responded dryly, making his mother smile in spite of herself.

"Well, thank the lord for that," she replied with the same droll humour. "It's about time, don't you think?"

"Hey!" Danny protested as Lindsay laughed.

Rosa smiled and then impulsively reached out to hug them both again. "Oh, you've made my day, my whole week in actual fact," she declared extravagantly.

Danny grinned at her. "Glad to be of service."

"We're moving into a new house too," Lucy put in then, delighted with herself for being the one to break the news about the wedding and wanting to capitalise further on that by passing on some more family gossip, "But Daddy says we have to make it hobbi-toe-bull first."

"I think you mean habitable, peanut," Danny told her with a chuckle and then raised his eyebrows at his mother's enquiring look.

"It's a long story, Ma," he said, hooking his arm affectionately around her shoulders. "How about we tell it to you over lunch, huh? You were planning on feeding us, right?"

"He seems more himself today," Michael remarked quietly to Lindsay as he took her coat from her after Rosa, Danny and Lucy had headed off down the hallway towards the homey family kitchen at the end.

Lindsay nodded. "He seems to have turned a corner," she confirmed, knowing how worried both Danny's parents had been about him since Bert's death. "He still retreats into himself every so often, but he's not completely numbed by his grief anymore."

"I would say that you have a lot to do with that," Michael said wisely. "You were always the woman he wanted and he struggled without you in his life to be there for him."

"He and Rachel seemed happy enough to me," Lindsay commented lightly.

"Ahh but there's a difference between a physical connection and a truly emotional one, isn't there? Sometimes we make do because we don't want to be alone. Strip away the surface protection and delve deeper and that's where the real truth lies."

Lindsay nodded. Danny had said as much to her yesterday when he'd told her that he'd never really stopped loving her. Her insecurities in respect to his relationship with Rachel were slowly receding, but she still struggled with it from time to time. She supposed part of her always would. It didn't define her thinking anymore though. She trusted the love he bestowed on her now, whereas before she'd often doubted it. It helped that they'd learnt to express it more because she was someone who needed that regular reassurance from him.

She glanced at the diamond ring on her finger and smiled. To love and to cherish, that's what it was all about wasn't it? The traditional wedding vows were more than just words; they were rules to live by. Her and Danny, they'd loved, no doubt about that, but they hadn't really cherished, not in the way that they should have done anyway. They cherished now however and maybe that was what made all the difference. This time those vows would be both made _and_ kept.

This time, deep in her heart, she knew they'd get it right.

_**To be continued…**_


	48. A Blot on the Horizon

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **Hi! New chapter for you – sorry it took so long. Busy few weeks what with one thing and another. Anyway, I finally managed to focus enough on my writing to finish this so that's the main thing. Hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think x

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 48 – A Blot on the Horizon**_

A month or so later, Lindsay found herself tuning out the conversation as Danny explained to their architect and builder what they wanted in the kitchen of their new home.

She felt a little guilty for not being more interested in proceedings, but truth was - although she was more than willing to provide her input into the final design - she wasn't all that bothered about the mechanics of how they achieved it. Danny, on the other hand, seemed to want to be involved in every last detail. She predicted that Bob - their rather aptly named builder – and Marcus, the architect, would be cursing his name before long.

Wandering away from the three men, she lifted an old-fashioned key off a hook near the door, and let herself out into the over-grown garden beyond. It was early March and spring was most definitely in the air. She felt her spirits soar as she breathed in the fresh, clean scent of nature in bud. The garden was currently choked with weeds, but she could imagine how it would look once it had been landscaped to their specification.

The cracked paving stones underneath her feet would be replaced with slatted wooden decking, whilst the rest of the space would be cleared and turfed, providing Lucy with somewhere safe and secure to play. The newly crafted lawn would be bordered by a wide bed, which would be planted with easy-care perennials and herbaceous shrubs as neither she nor Danny would have much time for gardening in between their work and family commitments.

Danny had been threatening to buy a barbeque to complete this residential tableau, and she smiled at the thought of him flipping burgers and overseeing his domain like a typical suburban husband and father. It didn't quite fit his image somehow. He was most definitely a family man, but he would never lose that streetwise edge, and quite frankly she wouldn't want him to. It was that which held her interest, kept her coming back for more time and time again.

Her thoughts turned to their wedding plans then. After a couple of weeks of deliberation, they'd finally settled on a date in early July for their nuptials. Both their mothers had been predictably aghast at this seemingly inexplicable decision. "But that's months away!" Rosa had exclaimed. "Why on earth would you want to wait so long?" Elizabeth had demanded.

The reasons behind that were both practical and personal. Danny was insistent that they had a proper honeymoon this time around and July was the only time that both of them could manage an extended period of leave. More than that though was the fact that they didn't want to rush things. Not because either of them had any remaining doubts, but more because they wanted to settle back into family life and coupledom at their own pace.

They were both extremely sensitive to the fact that they had failed to properly nurture their relationship first time around, and they didn't want to make the same mistake twice. With their jobs, parenthood and the renovations on the house to oversee, their free time to be together was going to be fairly limited over the next few months. Ultimately making a success of their marriage was their number one priority, and giving themselves this breathing space before the wedding afforded them the appropriate downtime from work and domestic practicalities to spend some quality time together. The renewal of their wedding vows, while undeniably important, was of a secondary concern to them when all was said and done.

Unfortunately for both their families, the wedding was the symbol of their permanent reconciliation and they would not be satisfied until the deed was done. "Ignore them," Danny had said when Lindsay had lamented this fact a few days earlier. "It's the right decision for us so they're just gonna have to live with it."

It was of course only a minor irritation in the grand scheme of things, of more concern to Lindsay right now was the brewing situation with Flack. It had begun the day they'd announced their engagement and slowly spiralled from there…

_**Four weeks earlier…**_

"Well, that went okay," Danny remarked to Lindsay as they strolled hand-in-hand down the sidewalk around an hour and a half before midday.

They'd just left the Lab after announcing their engagement and they'd been genuinely touched by the amount of well-wishes they'd received. These had come not only from their fellow CSIs, but also from the myriad of other employees of the New York Crime Lab too. They were now on their way to the nearby precinct – ostensibly to talk to Flack about their latest case, but mainly to pass on their happy news to their friend.

Lindsay nodded. "Everybody was so positive about it, weren't they?" she said.

Danny shot her a brief, sidelong glance. "You thought they wouldn't be?" he asked, surprised by the note of incredulity in her voice.

"I thought some people might roll their eyes and think 'here we go again'," she admitted, "But you could see that they were genuinely happy for us."

Danny privately thought that Lindsay often underestimated her popularity at the Lab. Her sweet, honest nature, her sparky sense of humour, as well as her genuine enthusiasm for the work endeared her to everyone. There really wasn't that much not to like in his opinion. He was completely and utterly biased of course, but he still enjoyed the fact that while the majority of the Lab saw one woman, behind closed doors he knew a different one entirely. She was all of the above things, but so much more as well. He knew her to have a hidden wicked streak for instance, so he paid no heed to the locker-room talk that suggested she was 'too nice' for a wise-ass like him. She was sexy and funny and she suited him just fine, thank you very much.

Pushing open the door to the precinct, he held it back with the flat of his hand as Lindsay preceded him into the crowded space. As usual, it was a hive of activity with phones ringing jarringly amongst a steady hum of voices and the occasional cussing of a particularly belligerent perp. Flack was sitting calmly at his desk amongst the fray with his eyes focused on the screen in front of him and his fingers tapping industriously at his keyboard. He wasn't as oblivious to their presence as he first appeared however, because he spotted their approach before they were even halfway across the room towards him.

"Whoa! Both Messer's at once," he said, leaning back in his chair and casually folding his hands behind his head. "To what do I owe this honour?" He grinned. "Or should I say misfortune?"

"Be nice," Danny said, cuffing his smirking friend upside the head, "Or I'll set the ball-and-chain on you."

Flack shuddered exaggeratedly.

"While I totally agree with the sentiment," Lindsay cut in, "If you ever refer to me like that again…" She fixed Danny with the proverbial evil eye. "Well, that brother or sister for Lucy you wanted? You're not gonna be remotely capable of fathering it."

"Ouch!" Flack remarked understatedly, while his friend winced at his fiancée's barbed comment.

"So why _are_ you here?" Don asked after a beat. Danny and Lindsay exchanged a loaded look before the latter held out her left hand towards the blue-eyed detective.

"Well, it's about damn time," Flack observed as he studied the tell-tale diamond twinkling on her third finger.

"We should have stayed at the Lab," Danny remarked to Lindsay under his breath.

She flashed a warm, appreciative smile in his direction before turning her attention to their impudent colleague. "Show more enthusiasm or I'll put you in charge of Lucy for the entire wedding day," she threatened in honey-coated tones.

Flack's eyes widened. "There's going to be an actual wedding?"

"There is," she confirmed with a nod and then raised her eyebrow at him. "So?"

"Just how excited is she on a scale of one to ten?" Don enquired, seemingly unconcerned by the fate that could potentially befall him.

"Off the chart," Lindsay told him breezily. "She's decided that everyone should wear pink on the day and I'm thinking she's got a point - I mean a themed wedding'd be something different, wouldn't it?"

"I always fancied an Elvis-themed one myself," Flack remarked lightly.

Lindsay wrinkled her nose. "Nah, I think pink's definitely the way to go. What do you reckon, honey?" she asked, turning to Danny for his opinion.

"Sounds cool," he returned, playing along. "I was thinking maybe a pearl-grey suit with a baby-pink shirt underneath for the groom, and then the reverse for the best man and groomsman. It'd make a statement, don't ya think?"

"Don't you're killing me here," Flack groaned theatrically and then capitulated with a wry shake of his head. "You make me wear pink and I won't speak to you for at least a year," he warned Lindsay as he rose to his feet and hugged her in congratulations.

"Oo! Where do I sign on the dotted line?" she teased.

"Are you _really _sure you want to marry her?" Flack asked Danny as he reached out to shake his friend's hand.

"Can't go back now – the divorce papers are in the trash," Danny informed him.

"Seriously?"

Danny crossed his heart with his forefinger. "God's honest truth."

"And you're absolutely certain there's no pre-nup to fall back on?" Flack said, and then rubbed at his upper arm when Lindsay punched it in protest. "Ouch! That hurt!" he exclaimed indignantly.

"As well it should," she told him primly. "You're pushing your luck, Detective."

"No longer funny, huh?" Don said, and then lifted his shoulders in a nonchalant shrug. "Ah well, it was fun while it lasted," he went on regretfully, and then laughed at the pinched expression that tightened Lindsay's pretty features in response.

"Look, I'm happy for you guys, honestly," he said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. "And just to prove it, I'll treat you to a celebratory drink tonight – how does that sound?"

"Better say yes," Danny advised his fiancée. "It's not that often that he reaches in his pocket for the cash so we should make the most of it while we can."

Lindsay's face relaxed into an easy smile. "What time?" she enquired.

"Seven thirty at Sullivans?" Don suggested.

Lindsay nodded. "I'll see if Shelley can stay on and babysit," she said, reaching in her purse for her cell. "Your shift doesn't finish until seven though," she pointed out to Danny as she scrolled through the numbers to find the one that she wanted.

He shrugged. "I'll swing by the apartment at lunch-time and pick up something to change into," he said. "I can grab a quick shower at the Lab after my shift and meet you there."

In the end, Lindsay decided to meet him at the Lab so that they could take the short walk to their favourite bar together. Nodding to the security guard as she crossed the Lobby to take the elevator to the 35th floor, she felt rather incongruous in her spiky-heeled boots, embellished jeans and cerulean-blue silk top. It was as if she was breaking some hidden dress-code or something. Her hair was artfully curled around her face because she knew Danny liked it like that, plus her make-up was a lot bolder than the neutral shades that she customarily chose for a day at work.

She found Danny in the locker-room, sitting on a long, wooden bench and pulling on his trusty Converse. His hair was still damp from his shower, and the air was fragrant with the familiar smell of his cologne. He was also bare-chested, something she wasn't sure was entirely appropriate in a unisex locker-room. "Anyone could walk in here, you know," she announced from the doorway.

He looked up from tying his laces and smiled. "And your point is?"

"You're only half-dressed!"

He grinned as he stood. "And that unsettles you, does it?" he asked, deliberately raising his arms above his head and linking his fingers together to stretch out his shower-warmed muscles.

"No but I … Oh!" The air whooshed from Lindsay's lungs when she found herself suddenly backed up against the wall and caged in by the solid, muscular form of her raison d'etre.

"No?" he asked huskily as his lips unerringly sought out the throbbing pulse-point at her throat.

"Danny!" she protested, even as she arched her neck into his mouth's moist caress.

"You smell good," he said as he lifted his head and looked down into the warm caramel of her eyes. "Look good too," he added as he ran a teasing finger just above the waistband of her jeans underneath the silky material of her top.

"Stop changing the subject!" she gasped as her stomach muscles jumped in reaction to his touch.

Threading his fingers through her hair, he brought her face to his, but stopped with his lips hovering above hers like a bee waiting to take its first taste of a flower's sweet nectar. "There's no-one here but us, babe," he informed her throatily before deliberately lowering his head and covering her mouth with his.

Lindsay surrendered with a soft moan as his hungry lips parted hers in a hot, passion-filled kiss that sent her heart to racing and put her nerve-endings on high alert. She ran her hands up his bare back as they embraced, appreciative of the smooth warm skin under her fingertips as her body melted into his.

"Babe, your lipstick's all smudged," Danny told her casually when he eventually released her several dizzying moments later.

Leaning her head back against the wall, Lindsay let out a shaky laugh. "You did that on purpose!" she accused as she fished in her purse for a handkerchief to blot her kiss-swollen mouth.

He grinned good-naturedly at her. "My reasons were purely selfish, I assure you," he told her. "I came over all nostalgic all of a sudden."

"Nostalgic?" she said as she deftly re-applied a coat of lipstick without the need to look in a mirror.

"The outfit," he said, waving his hand at her as if that explained everything. Reaching into his open locker, he withdrew a jade-green shirt and slipped his arms into it, but left the garment hanging loose from his broad shoulders as he slammed the door shut and turned back to face her.

"I don't understand," Lindsay said, her forehead creasing into a bewildered frown.

"The belt, the hair, the heels…"

Lindsay looked down at the studded belt she wore. It was one she'd had for years. She didn't wear it all that often anymore, but it had seemed the perfect accessory for her outfit tonight.

Danny chuckled at her continued confusion "You don't remember, do you?" he said. "You look like you did the first night we err…" He winked salaciously at her, "Did the deed so to speak. I'm pretty sure that's the same belt in actual fact."

Lindsay blushed, finding herself instantly assaulted by steamy memories of that unforgettable night on his pool table. She still couldn't quite believe she'd been so bold as to proposition him like that. Of course, he'd taken charge from then on – had memorably 'come up with something better' like she'd brazenly challenged him to.

"You remember what I was wearing?" she asked a little sceptically.

"Oh yeah," he said with a decisive nod. "You were all relaxed and unbuttoned, and so goddamn sexy I had a hard time concentrating on the game. You were usually so careful to stay in control, but that night… well, you were different - softer, more approachable somehow."

He was right of course. When they'd started dating after she'd returned from Montana after the trial, he'd been more restrained with her than she'd expected him to be. He wasn't afraid to touch her, far from it, but he'd let her set the pace of their relationship even so. Weeks in, they hadn't gone much further than second base, and yet he still hadn't pushed - despite the fact that she knew he must be getting increasingly frustrated with the situation.

As a result, she'd been more comfortable with him than she had been with any other man in her life, and that night she'd finally just let go and enjoyed herself. For once she'd not been worried about doing or saying the wrong thing. She'd held no expectations of where the night might lead, she'd simply let things develop naturally and develop they most certainly had.

She smiled. "You made me feel safe, but out of control at the same time," she said as she reached out to fasten the buttons of his shirt for him, an intimacy she afforded without any conscious thought.

He lightly stroked her cheek with the back of his finger. "A good combination," he observed.

She nodded. "For me, yes. I wanted to feel like I was being swept off my feet, but I also needed to know that you'd be there to catch me if I fell." She smiled up at him, her eyes soft with remembrance. "I trusted you to do that."

'And then I stole that trust away' he thought guiltily but chose not to voice that particular sentiment.

They were moving on. His fling with Rikki was no longer a taboo subject between them, but it was now firmly in the past. She trusted him in a way that she never had done before. It was only now that her faith was assured that he understood just how many doubts in him she'd previously harboured. No wonder their relationship had unravelled at the seams at the first hint of trouble.

"All done," she announced as she slipped the last of the buttons through its associated button-hole. "Looking good, Messer," she finished, reaching around to cheekily slap his butt to emphasise that point.

He caught her around the waist and hauled her back against him before she'd managed to take two steps away. Pressing his face into the crook of her neck, he breathed in of her light, floral scent and relished the sound of her girlish giggles as his facial hair tickled her skin. She squirmed in his arms, trying to free herself from his hold. "Danny!"

He laughed, but didn't immediately let go. "Kiss me," he demanded, tightening his arms around her when she willingly turned her head and obliged him, her hand sliding up to cup the back of his neck as his lips moved purposefully over hers.

"Come on, let's go," he said when they eventually broke apart. "We're late and Flack only lets his money see daylight for about an hour a day so we're running out of time to take advantage."

Lindsay laughed as he laced his fingers through hers and led her from the locker-room. She knew Flack wasn't as miserly as Danny was making out, but she always found enjoyment in the never-ending banter that the two men shared. It was a friendship that she somehow felt an integral part of; even though she knew she only existed on the periphery of it. She and Don had thankfully managed to stay friends after her and Danny had split, but she had missed being part of a trio all the same and was glad that the three of them had finally regained that lost dynamic.

She'd not had that all-for-one-and-one-for-all companionship in her life since Kelly and the others had been killed, and it filled a hole in her that her relationships with the rest of the team didn't. A certain level of professional respect existed between her and Mac and Stella for example, while Adam was like a little brother to her. Hawkes meanwhile was just well, Hawkes - a good friend but not a comrade-in-arms in the same way that Flack and Danny were.

When they arrived at Sullivans some fifteen minutes later, they were greeted with a cacophony of congratulatory hoots and cat-calls. Flack, it seemed, had invited the entire Lab, most of the police precinct and a good proportion of the rest of the NYPD as well. Apparently they were having an engagement party whether they liked it or not.

"I invited a few people," Flack told Lindsay understatedly once they'd fought their way through the crowd towards him, "Said you were putting a tab behind the bar."

"You wish," she laughed as she hugged him. "I can't believe you did this!"

He shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. "I figured there was something to celebrate," he said.

"Thank-you," Lindsay said sincerely. "It means a lot to know that our colleagues are happy for us. You'd think they'd be fed up with our dramas by now."

"Nah, you're their favourite form of entertainment," Flack quipped with a grin.

"So," Danny said as he hooked a companionable arm around Lindsay's shoulders, "How about that drink you promised us? I'll have a double-shot of Tennessee's finest since you're paying."

"What about you?" Don said to Lindsay. "Something pink with an umbrella?"

"A lime mojito wouldn't go amiss right now," she decided after a moment's contemplation.

"Ick!" Flack said with a grimace, and then his face broke into a welcoming smile as he spotted his girlfriend enter the bar. Sliding two fingers into the corners of his mouth, he whistled piercingly to attract her attention. "Hey Ellen! Over here!" he called, beckoning her over with a come-hither gesture of his fingers.

"Hey!" Ellen greeted when she finally reached his side. Curling an arm around his neck, she planted a warm kiss on his waiting lips. "What's all this?" she said, looking about her in some surprise. "You implied it was just going to be a quiet drink with a few colleagues."

"It is," Don said airily and she laughed.

"Looks more like a party to me," she remarked. "What's the occasion? Did someone get promoted?"

"No… Danno and Linds got re-engaged."

Ellen stared at him, the previously sunny expression on her face hardening in an instant. "And you invited me to their engagement party?" she exclaimed in horror. "Seriously Don! What were you thinking? You know I can't be here for this."

"Why not?" Flack demanded pugnaciously.

She rolled her eyes. "Rachel – that's why not!" she huffed. "Does she know about this?"

She fired this question at Danny, who shrugged in response. "I have no idea," he said.

"You mean you haven't told her?"

"What did you expect me to do? Call her up personally to give her the news?"

"Well, that would be the decent thing to do, wouldn't it?" Ellen said acidly, "But I guess you left your decency at the door when you hooked up with your ex and dumped poor Rachel like last week's trash."

Although he tried to remain neutral, Danny's quick temper fired at that. "Look Ellen – I don't know what your problem is, but you're way outta line, okay? You're making out like Rachel and I were practically engaged or something. Our relationship was more than casual – I won't belittle her by suggesting otherwise – but it was hardly the romance of the century. She knew the score when we got together. She understood I was still burned from my marriage breakdown and wasn't looking for anything heavy. I'm not saying she didn't get hurt by any of this, but we ended things between us months ago now. You seem to think I should be running every decision I make past her forever. When's it going to stop, huh? There comes a point when you just have to move on."

"What? Like Lindsay moved on from you, you mean?" Ellen snapped back.

Danny expelled an exasperated breath. "That was different. Me and Rachel - we'd been together what, six months? Lindsay and I – we've been a part of each other's lives in one way or another for nearly nine years now. We're married; we have a child together, plus we're work colleagues and close friends on top of that. The two of us are connected on so many levels - it was inevitable that it would take us a long time to come to terms with being apart."

"Justify it how you want, but that doesn't change the fact that I can't be part of celebrating something that broke my best friend's heart," Ellen said. "And you should know that," she told her boyfriend accusingly.

"Ellen, come on!" Flack exclaimed in frustration. "Danny's right – this has gone on long enough. I understand why you feel the need to stand by Rachel, but she seems fine about everything to me. I know for a fact that she had a date a couple of weeks ago - she told me so herself – asked me if I could finish off the paperwork on our case so she could leave on time to get ready."

"That's not the point."

"So what the hell is?"

"It's a question of loyalty. These two crossed the line and yet they flaunt their good fortune like they're entitled to it. If I stick around, be part of that, then it's as if I'm condoning the way they've trampled all over Rachel's feelings."

"Well, maybe you should just leave then," Flack said, decidedly pissed off now.

Ellen flushed. "Don't worry, I wouldn't stay if you paid me," she shot back just as heatedly…

**OOOOOO**

"I wondered where you'd gotten to."

Back in the present, Lindsay jumped a little as she felt Danny's arms slide around her waist from behind. "Have they gone?" she asked as she leant back against his solid form.

"Yep." He turned his head and kissed her hair. "What's up?"

"Nothing, I…" She stopped, sensing his scepticism without him having to voice it. "It's just this thing with Flack…"

Danny sighed. "Look, I know it's a bit awkward right now, but it'll work itself out eventually."

"Will it though?" Lindsay said, pulling away and turning around to face him.

He shrugged. "They made up, didn't they?"

"Yes, but she still refuses to be in the same room as me. How can you be okay with that - with the fact that we're the main reason that things have gotten so rocky between them?"

"I'm not, but I still think it's up to them to sort it out."

"But what if…?"

"What if what?" Danny prompted when she didn't finish the sentence.

Lindsay sighed. "He loves her, Danny."

Danny inclined his head in acknowledgement of that fact. "He does, that's true," he agreed, "Which I guess must seem a bit weird to you right now. I don't think you've gotten to see the best side of Ellen so far," he added with a wry smile.

"Oh, you think?" she responded sarcastically.

He chuckled. "She's cool, you know – she's just got herself into a bit of a state over this thing with us and Rachel. I think it's more to do with her feelings than Rachel's to be honest – which is probably why Flack is putting up with the way that she's been behaving. She came to New York because her company offered her a job here, and I think she expected to fit in straightaway. Unfortunately that didn't really happen. She hasn't said, but I get the impression her workmates are pretty clique-y – are way too involved in their own lives to make any effort to welcome someone new, you know? She met Don, which helped, and then through him, me and Rachel too…"

He paused. "She and Rachel really hit it off, and I guess it was their friendship that ultimately helped her to settle in and stop feeling so out of place."

"So she's hostile to anything that might threaten that?"

Danny nodded. "The four of us did spend a lot of time together, I guess, and you and I getting back together has obviously put the kibosh on that."

"She blames me for this, that's for sure," Lindsay said. "But Flack – he's like family to us, Danny. I know he's not Lucy's official godfather or anything, but he's a huge part of our lives all the same. Our daughter adores him, he's your best buddy, and… well; he's a good friend to me too. If Ellen won't even make an attempt to accept the two of us together, where does that leave us? She's his girlfriend – his first obligation is to her. He's gradually going to fade from our lives – can you deal with that?"

"Will I resent you for it, you mean?"

Lindsay shook her head. "No…" She stopped, and then shrugged. "Well, partly I guess. I was more concerned about how it would affect yours and Dons' friendship though."

"We've been friends for a long time, Linds. This won't change that."

"But it won't be the same, will it?" Lindsay persisted. "And what if this ends up being a deal-breaker for them? You and I will be the reason they broke up. How's that gonna make Don feel?"

"Not so great I would imagine, but it's not your responsibility even so," Danny told her.

"I put the moves on another woman's man, didn't I? I broke up your comfortable quartet…" She frowned. "What are you laughing at?"

"The idea of you being some sort of femme fatale," he said with a grin. Stepping closer, he dropped an affectionate kiss on the tip of her nose. "You're way too cute for that, trust me."

"Danny! I'm trying to be serious here!" she protested.

"I know, but what exactly did you do that was so terrible, huh? You broke down and told me you regretted our split, and then immediately apologised for voicing that thought and putting me in such an awkward position."

He shook his head. "That's not what I call putting the moves on someone. If you'd stripped naked and come on to me then you could probably count yourself as guilty, but ultimately it was my choice. I chose to put things on hold with Rachel while I worked out my feelings for you. I chose to end things with her when I realised that deep down I still loved you and would regret it if I didn't give our marriage a second chance. You're my wife, Lindsay – I want to be with you. Period."

He took her in his arms then, and she burrowed against him, using his strength to bolster up her flagging spirits. "So you're not worried about this at all?" she asked after a few moments of contemplative silence.

Danny sighed. "I don't like that Flack has ended up being stuck in the middle, but it's not us that's forcing him into making a choice, babe. If Ellen isn't willing to compromise then maybe she's not the one for him."

"So 'Bros before Hoes' – is that it?"

His lips quirked in amusement at her chosen turn of phrase, "Something like that, I suppose," he concurred. "Look, I'll support him in whatever he chooses to do – just like he did for me. When all this started, he told me I had to be honest with myself – and the two of you – but he didn't try and influence my decision in any way. For the record, I think he thinks I made the right call – he likes Rachel, but he adores you, so if you're worried he'll blame you in some way then don't. It's like you said – Bros before Hoes."

Lindsay lifted her head from his chest, one eyebrow cocked. "So I'm Flack's Bro now, am I?"

Danny chuckled, "In a manner of speaking, yeah."

She smiled. "I suppose you're right," she reluctantly conceded.

He crossed his eyes at her. "So stop worrying then."

She wanted to, she really did, but she couldn't help feeling that it could never be that simple. Maybe that was her neuroses talking, but she knew that somewhere along the line, someone was going to get hurt. The question was: who was that someone going to be?

_**To be continued…**_


	49. Loose Ends

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes: **_Hi! Sorry for the really long wait. I hit a major block with this story and ending up having to write another one to shake it. And then, after all that, real life intervened as well! :-( _

_Anyway, at long last here is a new update so please read on and enjoy..._

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 49 – Loose Ends**_

The next morning, Danny arrived at court for his scheduled appearance as an expert witness in what he thought was just the nick of time. What with Lucy prevaricating over what she wanted to wear to pre-school that day – hindsight told him he should have just picked an outfit out for her himself - his day had gotten off to a frustrating start and was threatening to continue in that vein for some time to come.

"Oh Danny, there you are," District Attorney Sarah Evans said as he approached at a somewhere between a walk and a run. "I was just telling Rachel that we got bumped from the schedule at the last minute. Court won't be in session for at least another hour yet. I've got to stay here and make a few phone calls, but I suggest the two of you go out and grab a cup of coffee or something. It's going to be a bit of a wait, I'm afraid."

Danny shot a questioning look at his ex as Sarah walked away. "You up for that or would you rather just hang around here?" he said, offering her a get-out clause should she need one.

They hadn't seen each other much in the weeks since his and Lindsay's re-engagement. Whether that was merely a co-incidence or because she'd been deliberately avoiding working cases with him, he wasn't entirely sure. Whatever the reason, he figured they probably ought to clear the air because they still had to work together in spite of the way their relationship had ended.

Somewhat to his surprise, Rachel chose to accompany him rather than stick around at the courthouse to wait. "I never offered you my congratulations, did I?" she said as they sat down in the window of a café across the street from the courthouse around fifteen minutes later.

Danny shook his head. "No," he confirmed, "But then I didn't honestly expect you to."

"I'm okay with it, I swear," Rachel promised him. "Time heals as they say – plus my twenty year old toy-boy sweetens the pot a little too," she added with a grin.

Danny laughed. "Twenty? Seriously?"

Rachel shook her head. "Nah, he's twenty-five, but I still feel like I'm robbing the cradle sometimes."

"Six years is not that much of an age-gap," Danny assured her and then smiled. "I'm glad to hear you're moving on."

"Eases your guilty conscience a little, huh?" she remarked lightly.

He sighed. "Rachel look, I know the situation wasn't the best, but I refuse to beat myself up about it. Guilt has gotten me into a whole lotta trouble in the past - especially where my relationship with Lindsay is concerned - and I'm not going to let it derail things now. I'm sorry if that seems a little harsh from your point of view, but there's just too much at stake from mine."

Rachel was silent for a long moment after this pronouncement. "You've changed," she eventually told him.

Danny's angular features took on a quizzical look. "I have?" he enquired.

"Yeah – you seem more… determined, I guess. It's like you finally know your place in the world..."

"… Whereas before I was searching for somewhere to fit in?" Danny finished for her. "I suppose you're right," he acknowledged. "Me an' Lindsay made a complete mess of something that in essentials was never anything but good. To have this second shot at it … well, we know how lucky we are and we're determined to make the most of it."

"Despite how bad things got between the two of you, you never wanted it to end, did you?" Rachel said in resigned tone. "I suppose I always knew that deep down, I just chose to ignore it because it was easier that way."

Danny nodded. "When my relationship with Lindsay fell apart, it was unbearably hard for me, but after a while I was determined to move on because there didn't seem to be any hope of reconciliation and I felt as if I was slowly dying inside. Being with you helped me to come back from that dark place I was in and I'm grateful for that, but Lindsay, she's just…"

He broke off and shook his head, unable to properly articulate just how much his wife meant to him. "I'm sorry I hurt you. It was never my intention."

"I know that and I am over it, I promise you," Rachel said.

"Are you?" Danny enquired with a degree of scepticism in his tone, "Because if Ellen's attitude is anything to go by, you'd be forgiven for thinking completely the opposite."

Rachel frowned in confusion. "Why?" she asked.

He filled her in about Ellen's negative reaction to his and Lindsay's engagement and her expression grew grave with concern. "Damn! I thought I'd gotten through to her," she muttered.

"None of this is coming from you then?" Danny asked her.

Rachel shook her head. "No… I mean maybe a few months ago it might have been, but now? No. I'm fine with everything now and Ellen knows that."

"So what's her problem then?"

"I don't know. After Lindsay pointed out that it wasn't fair for Flack to get caught in the middle of this, she promised she'd make more of an effort."

Danny's eyes widened. "You've discussed this with Lindsay?" he said, his forehead creasing into a slight frown at this previously unknown information. "She never mentioned it."

Rachel shrugged. "She probably forgot. It was the day you were shot so it must have slipped her mind."

"But that was weeks ago now."

Rachel nodded. "Ellen and I had met for lunch that day and we were just returning to the precinct when Lindsay came to find me about going to interview Karenna Melvin about the Trebechi murder," she explained.

"And I'm guessing Ellen didn't exactly lay out the welcome mat, huh?" Danny surmised.

Rachel shot him a wry half-smile. "Well, what do you think? Lindsay had the balls to call her on it though and I have to admit she did have a fair point. This is between the three of us, it's nothing to do with Flack and he shouldn't get dragged into it."

"Well, it'd be nice if you reminded Ellen of that," Danny told her. "Lindsay's pretty upset – Don's friendship means a lot to her and she feels guilty about being the cause of all this strife between them."

"And that's supposed to mean something to me, is it?" Rachel shot back tartly. "I'm sorry, Danny, I may be over you and moving on with someone else, but that's still going a bit far, don't you think?"

Danny sighed. "I'm not expecting you to do this for Lindsay,Rachel - that's my concern -but I would hope that you'd be willing to do it for Flack – and for Ellen too, for that matter. They're your friends aren't they? Don's being pretty patient with her over all of this, but even he's going to get fed up of the situation eventually."

"I suppose you're right," Rachel said before she eventually conceded to his request. "Okay I'll talk to her - see if I can persuade her to lose the chip on her shoulder."

"Thank you, I'd appreciate it," Danny said sincerely, and then glanced at his watch. "We should probably be getting back," he said as he drained the last dregs of his coffee, "But I'm glad we had this chance to talk - it seems like it was long overdue."

"We ended things months ago now, Danny," Rachel reminded him as she rose to her feet and pulled on her coat.

"I know," Danny said as he did likewise, "But I still think we needed to clear the air now that the dust has finally settled. It would be different if we didn't have to work together but we do."

Rachel nodded as they exited the café. "I know that was something that you found difficult when you and Lindsay split," she said. "Seeing her every day when you were trying to get over her, I mean."

"It was hell," Danny agreed as they walked down the sidewalk to the nearby pedestrian crossing, "And that was with a boss who was sensitive to the situation and did all he could to give us the necessary space we needed from each other too."

"There's a big difference between a marital breakdown and the break-up of a six-month relationship though," Rachel said as she pushed the button to cross the road.

"I know," Danny agreed, "But I don't want it to seem like I'm missing a sensitivity chip by dismissing it as irrelevant."

"You're not. It wasn't my favourite situation to be in, but that's life, isn't it? Especially when you get involved with someone you work with. Yes, it hurt when we broke up, but I don't hold you responsible. You were honest with me from the start about how much you were prepared to commit to – as much as you were being honest with yourself at least anyway."

She paused as the lights changed and the two of them crossed with the rest of the public mass. "It's only Lindsay who doesn't know how to live without you, Danny," she pointed out dryly when they reached the opposite side of the road. "I'm doing just fine, thank you very much."

Danny threw back his head and laughed at that. "Well, that told me, huh?" he remarked good-naturedly.

Rachel smiled across at him. "Hell on the ego, I know, but it's still the truth. Of course I didn't love you the way Lindsay does so…" She broke off with a shrug of her shoulders. "It's easier to move on when you're not so emotionally invested, I think."

"I suppose you're right. If Lindsay and I had realised that at the time then maybe we would have tried harder to make things work."

"You've managed to pull it back from the brink though," Rachel pointed out. "Or you wouldn't have put that ring back on her finger, would you? That's gotta count for something, hasn't it?"

Danny opened his mouth to reply and then shook his head in disbelief. "I can't believe I'm having this conversation with you," he said incredulously.

"I know - weird isn't it?" Rachel concurred. "I suppose it all comes down to the fact that we were never really properly in love when all is said and done. Yes, we were friends and physically attracted to each other, plus I definitely think we possessed the potential for more. But we never really made it much past the starting line, did we? I suppose I always knew that your feelings for Lindsay weren't exactly in the past and I guess I subconsciously held back because of that. Fortunately so as it turned out because it makes it easier now. We can't ever go back to being the friends we were before we started seeing each other though, can we?" she concluded a little sadly.

Danny shook his head. "No, I don't think Lindsay would be comfortable with that. She trusts me now – something that she's struggled with in the past – but that trust is something that I've had to earn and something that I know that I have to go on earning if I want my marriage to work. She has her reasons for feeling insecure - reasons that I never properly understood before. Now that I do understand though, I would never want to do anything to exacerbate those insecurities. I love her too much to test her faith in that way. So no – we can't be friends like we were before – we can be work colleagues who socialise as part of a group occasionally but that's about it."

Rachel nodded and their eyes met in a look of mutual understanding before they tactfully let the subject drop. Heading up the steps and back into the busy courthouse, they turned their conversation to more professional matters, each of them glad that they'd finally gained that all important sense of closure and could therefore move on free from the shackles of their past.

**OOOOOO**

_**New York Crime Lab, several hours later…**_

"Oh good, you're back," Mac said with obvious relief as Danny exited the elevators some time shortly after noon. "How did it go?"

"Good, I think," Danny told him. "The judge adjourned proceedings for the day so we're gonna have to wait and see. There are still a few witnesses left to call too so there won't be a verdict for at least another couple of days."

Mac nodded. "Well, your timing is spot on – I thought I was going to have to send Lindsay out to a crime scene alone."

"She can handle it, Mac," Danny said loyally. "She's doing much better now."

Mac nodded. "I know, but I wouldn't send her into this scene without back-up whatever the circumstances," he said, "And I have a meeting with the Chief of Police in an hour.

"Lucky you," Danny commented dryly, earning himself a reluctant half-smile from his boss.

"Mac? You wanted to see me?"

Lindsay's light voice interrupted their conversation then and they both turned to watch her approach. "Hey babe!" she said, smiling at her husband as she joined them

"Hey yourself!" he returned with a wink, and then glanced over at their boss with an expectant look in his eyes. "So hit us with it, Mac," he declared.

"Shooting in Harlem," Mac told them, handing over the tablet in his hands which contained the relevant details. "Tread carefully with this one. Reports are that tensions are running high so the situation could be volatile."

"Gonna need to change out of the monkey-suit then," Danny said as he quickly reviewed the crime scene details. "Flack on the scene?" he asked, his eyes still on the screen in front of him.

Mac shook his head. "No, Burrows," he replied, causing Danny to wince in reaction.

"Now you see why I wanted you there," Mac said as the younger detective lifted his gaze to meet his.

Danny nodded, his expression uncompromising. "Sure," he said bleakly, "Burrows is a Grade A tool."

"Danny!" Lindsay instantly chided.

"What?" he said, unrepentant. "Everybody knows it."

"But only you would have the nerve to just go ahead and say it!" she exclaimed.

"Burrows gets the job done, I'll give him that," Mac cut in, "But I can't say I agree with his methods - takes too many unnecessary risks for my liking."

"In other words he's a tool," Danny said sidelong to his wife who rolled her eyes, making him grin. "Why don't you go and get the kits?" he suggested. He tugged pointedly at the jacket of the dark-grey suit he was wearing. "I need to change into something a little less conspicuous before we head out."

"Why? I think you look hot," Lindsay said in an admiring tone.

He waggled his eyebrows suggestively at her. "Oh yeah?"

"Mmm-mm," she confirmed with a nod, "But I have to admit your butt definitely looks better in jeans," she said over her shoulder as she walked away with a sexy jaunt to her step.

Danny laughed and then caught the look on Mac's face. "Sorry boss – a little too much personal stuff, huh?"

"For the Lab, yes," Mac agreed before his stern expression softened a little around the edges, "But speaking as your friend rather than your boss, I'm glad to see that the two of you have rediscovered the fun side of your relationship."

Danny nodded. "It sounds kind of dumb, but I don't think we've been this relaxed with each other since we first started dating all those years ago."

"But that's a good thing, isn't it?"

"It sure is." Danny said, and then let out a regretful sigh. "We wasted so much time, Mac."

"Just be grateful that you're in a good place now," Mac advised sagely. "Regrets never did anyone any good in my experience."

Danny nodded solemnly. "Words of wisdom from a very wise man," he intoned drolly.

Mac chuckled. "Well, I don't know about that, but I like to think I've lived long enough to know a little something about love."

"So maybe you should do something about finding some for yourself, huh, boss?" Danny suggested with a grin.

"And maybe you should mind your own business and get to that crime scene ASAP," Mac countered sternly.

Danny laughed before his expression turned serious again. "Thanks for not sending Linds out there alone by the way. I wouldn't trust Burrows to watch her back as far as I could throw him. He's too busy chasing his next commendation to be bothered about a lowly CSI's welfare."

"And one day that's gonna bite him on the ass," Mac assured him.

"Yeah, just as long as it's not on my watch and doesn't involve my wife," Danny returned grimly.

"Keep your temper, Danny," Mac warned him. "He isn't worth the trouble."

"Are you suggesting that I don't know how to play nice?"

"I'm suggesting that you can be overly defensive when it comes to Lindsay so don't let Burrows push your buttons, okay? Just get in, get the job done and get out. I don't want the two of you caught in the middle of a riot if the situation escalates."

Danny nodded. "I'll mind my P's and Q's, I promise," he assured his superior.

Mac smiled at that. "Well, I'll believe _that _when I see it," he commented dryly, "But I appreciate the sentiment anyway."

"I should be offended by that, you know," Danny told him haughtily.

Mac chuckled. "You forget, Danny - I know you. I trust that you'll keep it the right side of professional, but as for completely biting your tongue…" His eyebrows lifted, the gesture getting the point across better than any words would have done.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah – never could stand for any B.S. from anyone and nothing much has changed in the last twelve years, huh?"

"Maybe not but that's what makes you so good at your job," Mac pointed out, "That killer instinct to know when someone is attempting to pull the wool over your eyes. At least now you've learnt to use it to your advantage rather than disadvantage. That's progress as far as I'm concerned."

"Love of a good woman is what did it in the end," Danny admitted candidly. "Before Linds I was a bit of a loose cannon, I have to admit, but when you have someone at home who is depending on you to stay safe, the whole playing field changes before you even realise it."

"It's called growing up, Danny," Mac told him dryly, "You took your time about it, but you got there in the end."

"Thanks – I think," Danny replied with an ironic twist of his lips before shaking himself out of his inertia. "Well anyway, I'd better get going," he said.

Mac nodded. "I'll talk to you later," he said by way of farewell as they stepped around each other and headed off in opposite directions.

In the locker-room, Danny swapped his suit for a pair of navy jeans, a forest green sweater and his trusty converse, and then grabbed his leather jacket and went in search of his wife. "You hungry?" he asked her as they headed for the elevator a few minutes later.

"Danny!" she protested. "We've got to get to the crime scene."

"Which we're likely to be at for hours," he pointed out, "I don't think Mac'll begrudge us a little sustenance first. I'm not talking a three-course meal - just a hot dog from a cart or something."

Lindsay nodded. "Alright, just as long as we're not too long."

Danny grinned at her. "Quite the little slave-driver, aren't you, babe?

She smiled beatifically back at him. "Yeah and don't you forget it, buddy."

In the end, they opted for freshly filled bagels from a little deli near the Lab and settled on two of the high stools that lined the counter against the far wall to eat their meal.

"I talked to Rachel by the way," Danny said after a few minutes of companionable silence, "About the situation with Flack and Ellen, I mean."

"I thought you were supposed to be in court," Lindsay said, her forehead creasing with a tiny frown.

"We were, but our case was delayed for an hour so we had some time to kill." He reached out and placed his hand over hers. "There was nothing more to it than that," he told her earnestly before he withdrew his hand and picked up his bagel again.

"I know, but I'm still not overly comfortable with you spending time alone with her. I know it's inevitable seeing as you have to work together, but I don't have to like it, do I?"

Danny shook his head as he swallowed another mouthful of his lunch. "No, just as long as you accept that it's gonna be unavoidable sometimes."

"So what did she say then?" Lindsay asked, determinedly shaking off the stab of jealousy that had twisted her insides at the thought of him talking privately with his ex.

"Well, long story short - she's gonna try and talk some sense into Ellen."

"You think it'll do any good?" Lindsay's tone indicated that she clearly thought otherwise.

Danny shrugged. "Well, if anyone can get through to her, Rachel can," he said, "But I'm not holding my breath. I don't think Ellen's ever going to accept you and me entirely, but I'm hoping that she stops being so antagonistic about it all."

Lindsay's eyes narrowed. "You said it didn't bother you yesterday," she accused.

"I meant I didn't feel responsible for the situation," he explained, "Doesn't mean I'm taking pleasure in watching my best buddy's relationship go down the pan though."

"And what else did Rachel say?" Lindsay asked, sensing there was more that he wanted to say but that he wasn't quite sure how to say it.

Danny's expression turned a little wary at that, knowing as he did that he was about to tread on sensitive ground. It had to be done though. He'd volunteered the information about his conversation with Rachel that morning because he knew that he couldn't keep it secret from her. Didn't mean he wasn't apprehensive about her reaction though.

"Nothing much – we talked is all," he ventured carefully.

"About what?" Lindsay inevitably prompted.

"About the new guy she's seeing," he said, "And about our engagement and about the way things ended between her and me too…" He sighed. "It was a conversation we needed to have, Linds."

"So you and her are best buddies again now, I take it?"

He shot her a slightly reproachful look. "I think you know me better than that," he told her critically. "I told her that our relationship had to be strictly professional from now on because you wouldn't be comfortable with anything else."

"Well, thanks for such a noble sacrifice on my behalf," Lindsay returned sarcastically.

"Lindsay!" Danny said a bit more sharply then. "Just stop okay? It isn't a sacrifice. I understand perfectly why you wouldn't be happy about me having any kind of relationship with Rachel outside of the professional. I love you and I have no intention of putting you through that."

His eyes held hers until she let go of the breath she hadn't realised she was holding. "I know, I'm sorry – it's just… well, you know."

"I know," Danny said quietly, reaching for her hand again and gently squeezing her fingers. "We both know it's gonna take time for the trust to be completely re-established between the two of us, but as long as we keep on talking honestly to each other then I know we'll get there eventually."

The knots in her stomach slowly unravelling, Lindsay nodded in agreement, "Yeah, I know that too," she assured him.

"So are we A-OK partner?" Danny asked her with a twinkle.

She graced him with her trademark sunny smile. "Yeah, I think so."

He nodded once in satisfaction. "Good, so let's eat up and get to the crime scene, yeah? The sooner we finish up there, the sooner we can get home to that gorgeous little daughter of ours."

**OOOOOO**

_**Harlem, forty minutes later…**_

As soon as they stepped out the car, they could feel the buzz of social unrest hanging heavy in the air. A crowd had gathered outside of the apartment building where the shooting had taken place, and the hum of background conversation had a noticeably menacing edge to it. Danny instinctively moved closer to Lindsay as they crossed the short distance from where they'd parked to the cordoned off area around the crime scene. He knew that she was trained to deal with such situations, but he couldn't turn his protective instincts off like a switch. She was family, and family was something that you were prepared to lay your life down for.

"Well, lookey-here, if it isn't the dream team," Detective Alan Burrows drawled as they ducked under the yellow crime scene tape.

"Count to ten," Lindsay muttered under her breath to her husband as they walked side-by-side towards the Detective in charge.

"Already at twenty," Danny murmured back, making her smile while he was forced to continue to grit his teeth. Burrows was just so smug, he only had to look at the guy and it rubbed him up the wrong way.

"I hear she ball-and-chained you again, Messer," Burrows said as they approached. Without asking permission, he caught hold of Lindsay's hand to study her ring. "Nice – a little small though, don't you think? Couldn't you afford anything better?" He shot a look at Danny and then let out a derisive laugh. "Of course, yeah, I forgot – CSI salary and all that."

"It's Tiffany's and it's perfect," Lindsay said, pointedly removing her hand from Burrows' slimy grasp before Danny stepped in to forcibly separate them. She knew that the smarmy detective could never pass up an opportunity to needle her other half in some way, and her presence was only adding an extra enjoyment factor to the situation for him. She didn't have to look at Danny to know that he was poised like a snake ready to strike either. She had to shut this down before Burrows said something to light the blue-touch paper and the whole thing escalated out of control.

She fixed the burly detective with a cool gaze. "Are we done with pleasantries?" she asked. "Because I thought there was a crime scene for us to process?"

"Oo – quite the little dominatrix, aren't we, sweetheart?" Burrows said with a delighted laugh.

"Danny!" Lindsay gasped when he suddenly leapt into action with the speed of an Olympic sprinter out of the starting blocks. She thought he'd been going for Burrows, but instead he grabbed hold of her and shoved her down to the ground just as the sound of a shot rang through the air.

More shots were fired in the commotion that followed, but the two of them managed to take cover behind a large dumpster. "You okay?" Danny asked her, his voice a little breathless from the sprint across the street. Lindsay nodded, her eyes large in the paleness of her face. Her heart was racing, but her hands were rock-steady around her gun.

Two more shots pinged against the metal of the dumpster making it vibrate alarmingly. "We've gotta get inside," Danny told her. "We're too exposed out here."

Lindsay gauged the distance between the dumpster and the door of the apartment building. It was a considerable way across open ground and neither of them was wearing a vest. "We'll never make it!" she exclaimed.

"Babe, we're sitting ducks out here," he insisted. "We'll do it in stages, okay? See that cop car?"

He indicated a dented and shrapnel-damaged NYPD vehicle parked near the entrance of the building. She nodded.

"When I say so, you keep low and run as fast as you can towards it, alright? I'll cover you."

She shook her head. "Danny…"

"And then you cover me while I go," he continued, cutting across her protest.

"But…"

"But nothing, okay? That's an order, Detective!"

He didn't like pulling rank on her, but he had to keep her mind focused on the job. She was in danger of letting her personal feelings for him get in the way of her professional training. It was why relationships like theirs, while not strictly forbidden, were nevertheless frowned upon by the establishment. They were lucky that they were CSIs actually because Danny was fairly sure that had they worked the beat, they would have been separated and assigned to different precincts the moment their relationship had become public. And there would have been nothing they could have done about it either.

His tactic did the trick and her expression hardened into one of steely resolve. "Alright, let's do it," she said with a curt nod.

Fisting his fingers into her hair, he pulled her towards him and planted a hard, passionate kiss on her lips. Keeping their professional heads was one thing, but this was life and death and he wasn't going to let her leave his side without saying it. "I love you," he told her.

She nodded, tears sparking in her eyes. "I love you too," she responded. "Stay safe for me."

"I'll do my best," he assured her, knowing that her request was something that he couldn't guarantee.

Inching his way forward, he peered around the edge of the dumpster to stake out what they were up against. There were a couple of uniformed cops barricaded behind a second police car but the rest – including Burrows - had taken cover inside, waiting for back-up to arrive. He signalled and managed to gain the attention of one of the trapped cops, who nodded and then prepared to fire off a couple of warning shots to divert attention away from them.

Danny pulled Lindsay into his side. "Okay, on three," he murmured in her ear, his breath rustling her hair as he spoke. She nodded, her fingers tightening their grip on her gun in preparation.

Once he'd established that she was ready, he held up his forefinger, waited until the other cop acknowledged his signal, and then counted up to three with two other fingers. Shots immediately rang out and Danny propelled Lindsay forward with firm hand between her shoulder-blades.

"Go babe!" he instructed her urgently. "Go! Go! GO!"

_**To be continued…**_

_I know a cliff-hanger! Arghh! Sorry, but I couldn't resist – LOL! Till next time then… CharmedBec x_


	50. Holding the Baby

**HOLD ME NOW**

**Disclaimer: **The characters in CSI: New York do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

**Summary: **The cliché was true, sometimes you didn't know what you had until it was gone. The question was: could you ever get it back again once you'd lost it? Lindsay Monroe was about to find out the answer.

**Notes:** I know, I know, I've been AWOL for ages! Real life has seriously gotten in the way over the last few months so writing this chapter has been very slow-going. I've been chipping away at it paragraph by paragraph and finally it's finished. Yay!

With no further ado then, please read on for Chapter 50 of 'Hold Me Now.' It's a slightly lengthier chapter than usual so hopefully it's worth the extremely long wait!

**OOOOOO**

_**Part 50 – Holding the Baby**_

Putting the car into park, Mac Taylor, First Grade Detective and illustrious head of the New York Crime Lab, released his seatbelt and exited the vehicle in one smooth, authoritative move. There was something about his bearing that made you immediately want to jump to attention and salute. Here was a man of great power, but once you got to know him better, you realised he was also one of immense compassion - hence him taking care of the mercy mission that he could have easily gotten one of his subordinates to deal with himself. And this was in spite of the fact that he was still on duty and had a backlog of other tasks to get through before he could head home for the evening and some much-needed R&R.

The young brunette in the front office looked up from her computer with a bright smile as he entered. "Can I help you, sir?" she enquired officiously.

Listening intently while he explained his reason for being there, she nodded once in acknowledgement and then promptly asked him for some I.D. "It's just down the corridor," she said after she'd checked his credentials and returned his badge to him. "I'll show you if you like."

Rising smoothly from her chair, she rounded the desk and led him out of the office into the corridor beyond. Noticing the brightly coloured picture adorning the opposite wall, Mac drew to a halt as he spotted the familiar name printed in bold capitals underneath. Unfortunately he didn't have very long to stop and appreciate the artwork because his female guide set off down the hallway at a brisk pace, her heels click-clacking against the floor in sharp, rhythmic beats.

When they reached the far end of the corridor, she knocked smartly on the door directly in front of her and then pushed it open and poked her head around the frame. "Detective Mac Taylor," she announced as if she was introducing a titled nobleman at a nineteenth century ball.

The slightly older woman sitting behind the desk rose to greet him as he entered but whatever she was about to say was interrupted by a delighted squeal and a sudden rush of small feet.

"Uncle Mac! You're here! You're here!"

Mac rocked back on his heels as his goddaughter barrelled into him like a mini freight train, exuberantly hugging him around the legs. Ruffling her hair in affectionate greeting, he knelt down in front of her so that the two of them were eye-to-eye. "Well, hello to you too!" he said with a warm smile.

"All my fwiends went home _ages_ ago, Uncle Mac!" Lucy told him dramatically, her blue eyes indicating her confusion as to why she'd been so cruelly left behind.

Mac sighed as he brushed a stray curl off her forehead. "I know, sweetheart. I'm sorry I got here so late."

"Why didn't Mommy or Daddy come?" the little girl inevitably asked.

"Ahh…"

His mind rewound to the phone-call he'd received an hour or so earlier. How best to explain the current situation to an impressionable four year old, he wondered. "They got caught up at work so they asked me to pick you up instead," he told her, deliberately keeping the details to a minimum to avoid unnecessarily scaring her.

"Okay," Lucy said, accepting his explanation without question. "Are we going to your 'partment then?"

He sighed. "No, honey. We've got to go back to the Lab. Your Mommy and Daddy will come and fetch you from there when they're ready to take you home."

Lucy's expression brightened at that. "Cool!" she declared. "I likes it at the Lab."

Mac laughed. "I wonder why that is?" he remarked with a grin. "Wouldn't have anything to do with being the centre of everyone's attention while you're there, would it?" He reached out and lightly tweaked her nose between his thumb and forefinger, making her giggle. "Why don't you go and get your back-pack and coat while I talk to your teacher?" he suggested as he straightened up.

"Okay," Lucy agreed with her mother's beaming smile, and then scuttled off towards the cloakroom to gather her things.

Once she was out of ear-shot, Mac turned his attention to the woman who had been waiting patiently for the opportunity to speak. "Miss Benson, I presume?" he said, reaching out to shake her offered hand.

She nodded. "Yes – I'm Louise," she introduced herself. "Louise Benson, that is."

He inclined in his head in response. "Mac – Mac Taylor – Lucy's godfather."

"Yes - I kind of figured that," she said with a laugh before her expression turned more serious again. "Are Danny and Lindsay all right?" she asked him, the tone of her voice indicating that she was aware of the Messers' profession and the inherent dangers in it.

"They've become embroiled in something of a situation, but they're fine," Mac told her, not wanting to give away too many details whilst the operation was still in progress. He'd received news of the siege at the crime scene in Harlem only a couple of hours ago. He'd been on his way out the door and heading over there when his phone had rung in his jacket's inside pocket...

_**Two hours previously…**_

"_Mac?" _

"_Danny?" Mac clutched his cell tighter to his ear, concerned by the slightly frantic note that he heard in the younger man's voice. "Are you and Lindsay all right?"_

"_Yeah, yeah, we're fine," Danny assured him and then huffed out a breath. "Well, Lindsay got grazed by a bullet as we took cover but thankfully she's okay. Freaked me out a little when I saw all the blood, but I've cleaned her up some and it doesn't appear to be too serious. She'll need to get it checked out at the E.R. when we get outta here but I don't think it's anything to worry about."_

"_That's good," Mac said with some relief, "So what's the situation otherwise?" he asked._

"_Well, Flack and the guys arrived some time back, but things are still pretty tense out there. Burrows wants them to storm the place and take the perps out, but Flack's refusing to co-operate at the moment."_

"_And what's your assessment of the situation?"_

"_Does it matter at this point?"_

"_It does if you think Flack's making the wrong call."_

"_Well, lucky for him, I don't – going in all guns blazin' would be premature - we'd end up with a goddamn massacre on our hands. Burrows knows it, but he just doesn't see the issue. We're trapped in here and we've got the bad guys surrounded so…"_

"_Pistols at dawn and to hell with the consequences?" Mac said, filling in the blanks for him._

"_Exactly," Danny concurred. "But some of the perps are only kids, Mac – barely into their teens from what I saw. The ringleaders deserve what's coming to them, but the younger ones… well, they've still got a chance to get out and make something decent of their lives."_

_Mac nodded, understanding where this sentiment came from. "Like you did you mean?" _

_Danny sighed. "I guess I can relate, yes. It's not that easy to say no in that situation, but it is possible if you're strong enough. They ain't gonna get the chance to turn things around if they're lying dead in the gutter though, are they?"_

"_No," Mac agreed solemnly._

"_Well anyway, that's wasn't why I was calling," Danny went on. "Lindsay's freakin' out cus it's Shelley's afternoon off so one of us was supposed to pick up Lucy from pre-school today. I could call my parents but it'd take them way too long to get into Manhattan, and Stella's away visiting friends so…_

"_I'm your last resort?" Mac finished for him._

"_I know it's a bit of an imposition but…"_

"_That's what godfathers are for, Danny," Mac said, abruptly cutting him off, "Call the school and let them know I'll be there as soon as I can."_

"_Okay good, I'll do that," Danny said, sounding decidedly relieved at his boss' easy acquiescence. "Thanks Mac – we owe you one."_

"_You owe me nothing," Mac contradicted. "As I said – that's what godfathers are for. Tell Lindsay not to worry, okay? I'll take care of Lucy. You two just concentrate on getting out of there safe and sound, all right?"_

"_Gotcha boss. Don't let the munchkin run rings around you though, huh? Tell her she'll have her Daddy to answer to if she plays up."_

_Mac smiled. "Wouldn't threatening her with Lindsay be more effective?" he joked. "I mean how often do you actually practise what you've just preached anyway?"_

_Danny laughed. "A lot more nowadays than I used to," he admitted. "I learned the hard way that it pays to lay down the rules and follow through with them no matter what."_

"_Besides, odds on, she'll be the perfect angel for you anyway," he added ruefully, "Wouldn't want to disappoint her beloved Uncle Mac, now would she? It's only her parents she's determined to test the boundaries with."_

_Knowing Lucy to be remarkably well-behaved for the average four year old, Mac didn't pay too much attention to this comment, but instead closed out their phone conversation with a patient "Just call the school and leave Lucy to me, Danny." _

This was an instruction that his younger colleague had duly followed, leading Mac to the rather alien environment of the public-funded Manhattan pre-school in which he now resided.

"Uncle Mac – I got my stuff. Can we go now?"

Mac looked down at the little girl who had popped up by his side like a Jack-in-a-Box, her arms full of the paraphernalia that all pre-schoolers seemed to need nowadays.

"Sure," he said, "But let's get your coat on first – your Mommy will not be happy with me if I let you catch cold."

"But you're the boss of Mommy, Uncle Mac," Lucy told him as she threaded her arms into the garment that he held out for her. "You gets to tell her what to do!"

"Not when it comes to you, I don't!" Mac laughed, smiling up at Lucy's teacher who had let out a muffled guffaw at her pupil's pronouncement. "When it comes to you, your Mommy is the boss of me."

"Why?" A puzzled frown creased Lucy's otherwise smooth forehead as she tried to get her head around this unfamiliar concept. Things were still very black and white to her – the subtleties of the shades of grey that existed in life were still somewhat beyond her comprehension.

"Because she's your Mommy and Mommies are more special than godfathers where their children are concerned," he explained as simply as he could.

"Godfathers are special too," Lucy assured him loyally as he zipped her coat up for her.

That gave him a warm fuzzy feeling inside. "Thank-you, sweetheart," he said, lightly stroking her baby-soft cheek with the back of his finger, "It's lovely of you to say so, but I'm still a little way down the pecking order in this case."

Lucy giggled at that and he smiled. "What's so funny, baby girl?" he said, playfully poking her in the stomach with the tip of his forefinger.

"Mommy might give you a time out if you look afta me wrong," she declared, clearly finding the idea of this highly entertaining.

"She might, that's true," he agreed solemnly. "I guess I'm just going to have to make sure I look after you properly then, aren't I?"

Lucy nodded and slipped her hand into his. "Don't worry, Uncle Mac, I tells you what to do. I knows all the rules. Daddy forgets them some times, but Mommy just says that's cus he likes to pretend he's a webel."

Mac frowned. "A webel?" he questioned.

"I think she means a rebel," Louise Benson told him with a laugh.

"Ahh," Mac said with a nod of understanding. He smiled at the teacher. "Little Ears, huh?"

She shrugged. "Maybe, but I think there's something to be said for a child witnessing how a relationship truly works. I know her parents have had their problems in the past, but they seem to be working through them now and Lucy's certainly a lot more settled because of it."

Mac nodded. "Neither one of them are the type to give up without a fight," he agreed. "And they'd do anything for this little one too," he added, squeezing the small fingers that were tightly grasped within his.

He looked down at his little charge, who was gazing up at him with something akin to hero worship shining in her blue eyes. "Shall we go then, Miss Messer?"

"Yes!" Lucy said, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet in her excitement. "Bye bye, Miss Benson - I see you again soon."

Mac nodded over his shoulder at the teacher as Lucy dragged him bodily towards the door by the hand. "Thanks for waiting until I could get here," he said.

She smiled. "You're welcome. Goodbye Lucy – you make sure you're a good girl for your godfather now."

"I always good, Miss Benson!" Lucy declared and Mac laughed.

"She tries anyway," he said with a smile. "Nice to meet you."

"Likewise," Louise Benson returned, lifting her hand in farewell as godfather and goddaughter left the classroom hand-in-hand. "If only it had been under different circumstances," she muttered to herself as Mac strode off purposefully down the corridor with Lucy trotting along beside him chattering away like a flock of sparrows.

She watched from the doorway until the pair were out of sight and then let out a deep sigh and turned away to gather her things, her final duty of the working day regrettably completed.

**OOOOOO**

_**New York Crime Lab, forty minutes later…**_

"Ah Mac, there you are," Sheldon Hawkes quickened his step as he spotted his boss exiting the elevator with the youngest Messer in tow. "I wondered where you'd gotten to."

"Hi Uncle Doc!" Lucy greeted him, slipping her hand from her godfather's and lifting up her arms for a hug.

Hawkes bent down and smoothly swung her up into his arms, settling her comfortably on his hip. "Hi Clemenza," he said, playing out a familiar ritual.

The little girl insisted on calling him Uncle 'Doc' despite him repeatedly telling her that wasn't his name. "But that's what Daddy calls you," she'd explained to him on numerous occasions.

Now however, she giggled delightedly at his greeting. "I called Lucy, Uncle Doc."

"Ahh but you might have been called Clemenza," he told her, recalling the conversation he'd had with Danny about baby names shortly before Lindsay had been due to give birth.

"But that's a boy's name!" Lucy predictably objected. How she knew that, Sheldon had no idea – he strongly suspected a little underhand coaching from a certain colleague who shared a number of genes in common with the pretty four year old in his arms.

"Oh well – how about I call you Little Miss Blue Eyes instead then?" he said with a smile.

She giggled again. "You're funny, Uncle Doc."

"Well, at least I've got something going for me," Hawkes remarked to Mac, who smiled in response.

"You could always just use her given name," he suggested wryly.

"I could," Sheldon agreed with an incline of his head, "But where's the fun in that?" His expression turned more serious then. "Flack wants you to call," he informed his boss.

Mac nodded. "Okay – can you entertain Little Miss Blue Eyes here while I deal with that then?"

Sheldon cocked his head to one side as if he needed to consider it. "I think I could be persuaded," he eventually decided. "What do you reckon, beautiful?"

He addressed this to the little girl in his arms. "Okay." Lucy nodded in acquiescence. "Is Uncle Adam here too?" she asked as they headed off towards the break room with her still perched on his hip.

Hawkes laughed. "Why? Aren't I good enough for you?"

"Yes, but if Uncle Adam comes and plays wiv us too we can have even more fun!" she told him expansively.

"Well, I'd have to agree he's a lot more on your level than me," Hawkes quipped with a grin. "Look, we'll go and see if we can find him in a minute," he promised, "But how about some juice first?"

"Yes please!" Lucy nodded effusively. "I hungry too," she informed him as he set her back down on her feet.

"Mmm, I guess it must be close to your dinner-time, huh?" Hawkes said with a glance at his watch. "Let's see what we can find, shall we?"

He opened the refrigerator door and peered inside, hoping for some inspiration. He didn't think Lindsay would be too enamoured of him feeding her little girl candy and cheese curls for dinner.

"That's Mommy's," Lucy helpfully told him, pointing out the white plastic sandwich box with the green clip-on lid on the middle shelf.

"Okay so let's see what we've got." He opened it to find what looked like some sort of cold pasta salad with tomatoes, ham and mushrooms. A quick blast in the microwave and he figured it would make a fairly nutritious evening meal for a four-year old.

His theory proved correct when five minutes later Lucy was happily ensconced at a table with the bowl of pasta, a beaker of juice and a fork that was a little too big for her, but that didn't seem to be hindering her ability to feed herself any. He sat opposite her with his hands curled around a steaming mug of coffee, watching with an affectionate smile as she enthusiastically tucked into her food.

"Whatcha lookin' at me like that for, Uncle Doc?" Lucy asked, pausing in the act of digging her fork back into her pasta.

"I'm thinking the Messers' make cute kids," he told her.

Lucy's eyes brightened. "Can you tell them to make another one?" she asked him.

Sheldon laughed. "I could, but honey, that's really up to them. Kids are a lot of responsibility even when they are as cute as a button like you."

"But if they made another one, I could be a big sister," she explained to him.

"And a very good big sister you'd make, I'm sure," he replied, "But when - or if - that happens is really for your Mommy and Daddy to decide. I'm guessing they might want to get married again before they start thinking about another baby."

"But I was already in Mommy's tummy when they got married the first time," Lucy objected. "I sees the wedding picture and Mommy is fat!"

"I think the word is 'blooming'," Hawkes said with a chuckle, "And I'm not sure that your Mommy and Daddy particularly planned it that way – I'm pretty sure you were something of a surprise to them."

"A very special surprise – that's what my Mommy says."

"And your Mommy'd know, wouldn't she?"

Lucy nodded in agreement. "Yes 'cus Mommy knows _everything_," she said. "Daddy says she's a big smarty pants."

Sheldon laughed. "Your Daddy knows how to sail pretty close to the wind where your Mommy is concerned too, doesn't he?" he observed dryly.

"When I asked Mommy about being a big sister, she said 'we'll see.'" Lucy told him. "That sometimes means yes but not yet, but sometimes it can mean no too. Which one do you think it is, Uncle Doc?"

"Ahh…" Sheldon hesitated, knowing the answer to that was frankly none of his business. "I wish I could tell you, sweetheart, but only your Mommy and Daddy can answer that particular question, I'm afraid."

"Mommy says 'we'll see' about us having a puppy too. Do you think she'd let us have a kitten instead?"

Hawkes chuckled, amused at how the conversation had switched from siblings to pets in a blink of an eye. "I think you'd have to ask her that too," he responded blandly.

"Don't you know _anything_?" Lucy demanded in childish exasperation.

Hawkes laughed. "Sweetie, I know lots, but I also know not to make your Mommy mad. It's more than my life is worth."

"Uncle Mac is scared of Mommy too," Lucy informed him guilelessly.

Hawkes choked on his coffee at that. "W-what?" he spluttered.

"He says Mommy's the boss of him when he has to look after me, not the other way round."

Sheldon smiled. "Interesting concept," he remarked, "True enough though, I suppose."

"Sheldon, I've got that autopsy report you wanted. I was going a little stir crazy down in the dungeon so I thought I'd bring it up personally…" Sid Hammerback strode into the break-room still dressed in his blue scrubs, but stopped in his tracks when he spotted their young visitor. "Well hello, my little munchkin – how are you today?"

"I good, Uncle Sid," Lucy told him brightly, and then lowered her voice. "Do you really work in the dungeon?" she asked in hushed tones. "Is that why Mommy and Daddy say I can't go down there?"

"No, I just call it a dungeon because the room where I work has no windows," Sid said, swiftly back-tracking on his earlier comment. Didn't want the kid suffering nightmares, now did he? "Your parents say you can't visit me there because you have to be a grown-up. There are no children allowed – that's the rules."

"Uncle Mac's rules?" Lucy enquired.

Sid nodded. "Well of course, he's the boss."

"Okay then but you're still allowed to show me your special glasses, aren't you?"

"For you, my little princess - anything," Sid replied, lifting his glasses from around his neck and clicking them into place on the bridge of his nose.

Lucy clapped her hands in delight. "Do it again, Uncle Sid! Do it again!"

Sheldon rolled his eyes as his colleague made a show of repeating the process several times over. "The things that amuse small children," he commented drolly.

"You're just jealous because you haven't got such a spectacular party trick to impress her with," Sid retorted glibly.

Hawkes didn't have the opportunity to respond appropriately to that because just then they were joined by a typically over-enthusiastic Adam Ross. Slapping a manila folder down on the table, he lifted his arms up in triumph. "Your lab results, Doctor Hawkes. Just call me a genius because that's what I _so_ am!"

Hawkes picked up the two folders that he'd been given in short succession. "Well, looks like my shift is over," he said, rising to his feet. He gestured at Lucy who was finishing off the remains of her meal, having been satisfactorily entertained by the superlative Sid and his magnificent glasses. "Which one of you is next?"

"Sorry, got another D.B. at eighteen hundred," Sid said, somewhat regretfully. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to love you and leave you, little one." He stroked an affectionate hand over Lucy's head in fond farewell and then turned for the door.

"Adam?" Sheldon looked questioningly over at his younger colleague. "It's only until Mac has finished dealing with... ahh... well, whatever he needs to deal with."

"Sure," Adam agreed congenially. It was the end of his shift but he figured he could hang around a little longer. It wasn't as if he had a date or anything.

"Thanks Adam," Hawkes said before bending down to drop a kiss on the top of Lucy's head. "See you later, Little Miss Blue Eyes."

"See you later, Uncle Doc!"

"Can we plays on the 'puters, Uncle Adam?" Lucy said after Hawkes had left. Sliding down from her seat, she slipped her small hand into his. Her fingers were a little sticky with the remnants of her dinner and her mouth was rimmed with a clown's smile of bright orange-red.

"Uhh, I guess," he fumbled. "You gotta clean up a bit first though."

Not quite sure how to negotiate the dos and don'ts of taking a small girl into the men's washroom, he decided to clean her messy hands and face with some wipes that they kept in the Trace Lab instead. Ten minutes later and Lucy was happily ensconced in his lap in the A.V. Lab, giggling as he manipulated various photos of his colleagues with the Lab's aging software, and also composited a number of identikits to her specific – and increasingly imaginative instructions.

"He looks like Mr Potato-Head!" Lucy said, delighted with her latest creation.

"He does that's true," Adam agreed as he printed the picture off to add to the small stack of similar artworks on the desk next to them.

Lucy snuggled deeper into his arms. "Can we make Daddy look a hundred again?" she asked him.

"Your wish is my command, young warrior," Adam said and called up the photo and the manipulation software with a quick click of his mouse.

"Are we having fun?" Mac asked dryly from the doorway fifteen minutes later when an identity parade of every Lab member in their dotage along with a decrepit-looking Detective Donald Flack adorned the big screen in the centre of the room.

"Uhh boss," Adam jolted in his chair at Mac's sudden appearance and almost tipped Lucy from his lap in the process. "I was just…" he trailed off with a helpless shrug of his shoulders.

"Look Uncle Mac – everyone is all old and wrinkly!" Lucy said, pointing a small finger at the gallery in front of her.

"So I see," he said as he came further into the room.

"Are Mommy and Daddy coming soon?" she asked him plaintively.

Mac sighed. It was looking as if the siege was going to be more prolonged than they'd originally thought. Negotiation hadn't worked so far but Flack hadn't given up hope of a peaceful conclusion just yet. "We're gonna give it until midnight and make a decision then," he'd told Mac on the phone earlier.

"Have you spoken to Danny again?" Mac had asked him.

"Yeah – I can tell he's starting to get a bit antsy about Lindsay, but she insists she's fine so I don't want to do anything drastic yet. It's mostly Messer playing the overprotective husband from what I can tell."

"I'll call her and see how the land lies," Mac said and on doing so had found Lindsay to be alert and communicative – and much more concerned about her daughter's welfare than the current predicament that she and her other half were in.

"What have you told her?" she asked him.

"Nothing much as yet," Mac replied. "I just told her that you and Danny had gotten caught up at work and you'd be by the Lab to pick her up later. She's fine, Lindsay – in her element given that she's the centre of everyone's undivided attention."

"She's bound to ask where we are eventually though," Lindsay predicted.

"Inevitably, yes, but it's not like we're incommunicado, is it? You and Danny can speak to her whenever you want."

Lindsay sighed. "Well, it's not looking like we're getting out of here before her bedtime anyway, so maybe you could call us up to say goodnight or something? That'd be a relatively normal thing for us to do. She won't realise anything's up then."

"Whatever you think's best," Mac agreed mildly, "The three of you will be reunited before you know it, you know," he added soothingly.

"I know," Lindsay said. "It's just that I try to be there to put her to bed as much as possible and tonight I've failed to do that."

"Through no fault of your own," Mac reminded her.

Lindsay released a soft, regretful sigh. "That's kind of beside the point when you're a Mom, Mac," she said before she forcibly pulled herself out of her funk. "Anyway, her bedtime's at seven," she continued briskly, "And she'll sleep anywhere if she's tired enough. The couch in your office would be a good bet, I think."

"Okay, I'll make her up a bed there then."

"And make sure she brushes her teeth and has a proper wash before she goes to sleep too."

"Yes, ma'am."

Lindsay laughed at his droll tone. "Sorry, I'm getting all Momma Bear on you, aren't I?"

'_It's a permanent affliction,_' Mac heard Danny quip in the background.

"Someone's got to be a responsible parent," Lindsay's voice faded out for a moment as she addressed her husband/fiancé.

'_That's cool – the job's all yours - I have no problem with being the fun one._'

"Mac?" Lindsay's voice came back onto the call. "I think I've changed my mind about re-marrying him. Can I send him back to where he came from?"

Mac smiled. "Unfortunately I think you're stuck with him for good, detective."

"Oh well, I suppose I'll just have to make the best of bad situation then, won't I?"

'_Hey!' _Danny's indignant protest was quickly followed by Lindsay's tinkling giggle.

Mac laughed. "I'll go and round up your little girl and then call you back," he said. "Sheldon said he'd handed over the babysitting duties to Adam so I dread to think what mischief the two of them have gotten up to whilst my back has been turned."

A little bit mischief as it had turned out, but maybe not as much as he might have expected. He supposed that might have something to do with the heavy-lidded child currently curled up in Adam's lap. All the excitement of her day at pre-school and the subsequent visit to the Crime Lab had apparently worn the poor thing out.

He reached down and lifted her up into his arms. "Okay, little one," he said as she lay her head on his shoulder and stuck her thumb in her mouth. "I've just spoken to your Mommy and she and your Daddy are going to be a little while longer, I'm afraid."

"So I not goin' home yet?" Lucy asked him drowsily.

"No, but Mommy told me it's your bedtime so I'm going to make you up a bed on the sofa in my office. How does that sound?"

"Will you read me a story before I go to sleep?"

"If Adam can find me one, I will," Mac promised, shooting a look at the Lab Tech who nodded and picked up a tablet from the desk and began to search.

Fifteen minutes later, Mac had his little goddaughter washed and nominally ready for bed. Due to the lack of available pyjamas, he'd simply removed her shoes and un-braided her hair, figuring she could sleep in the little dress that she wore for one night.

"Okay so how about we call your Mommy and Daddy to say goodnight?" he suggested, settling her on his lap and pulling out his cell.

"Hey Mac!" Lindsay answered after a couple of rings.

"Hi Mommy! It's me!" Lucy chirped as he switched the phone to loud speaker, "I've been visiting at the Lab with Uncle Mac!"

Mac could hear the smile in Lindsay's voice as she replied. "I know you have, honey. Have you had a good time?"

"Yes, Uncle Doc made me dinner, then Uncle Sid showed me his funny glasses, and then me and Uncle Adam made silly pictures with the 'puters and now Uncle Mac's going to read me a story."

"Well, sounds like you've had a busy afternoon. I guess you must be pretty tired after all that activity, huh?"

Lucy nodded. "Yes, but I goin' to sleep in Uncle Mac's office until you and Daddy get here. Are you comin' soon?"

"I hope so, baby. This job is taking a lot longer than we thought, but we should hopefully be there when you wake up."

"Okay. Do you hafta work again tomorrow or is it a Lucy and Mommy day?"

"It's a Lucy and Mommy day," her mother informed her.

"I think Daddy can be there too," Mac said and watched as his goddaughter's face lit up at the news.

"Really?" Lindsay asked him. "You sure?"

"When tonight is over, you'll both have pulled close to a double-shift. Tell Danny he can take the day tomorrow if he wants."

"Thanks Mac."

"Is Daddy with you Mommy or is he somewhere else?" Lucy asked then.

"He's here, sweetie," Lindsay replied. "Do you want to say 'hi!'?"

"Yes please, Mommy."

"_Babe?"_

"_Yeah?"_

"_Your daughter wants to speak to you."_

"_Okay – be right there."_

There was a rustling sound and then Danny's distinctive Staten Island tones came from the cell's tinny speaker. "Hey pumpkin! Did you have a good day today?"

"Yes," Lucy nodded even though her father couldn't see her. "First I went to pre-school and we made a model of the planets, and then I visited the Lab after Uncle Mac came and fetched me, and then Uncle Doc made me dinner…" She drew in a breath. "... and then me and Uncle Adam made you look a hundred with the 'puter!" she said with giggle. "Mommy too, but you looks the funniest."

"Is that so, huh? I think I'm going to have to have a quiet word with our Mr Ross."

"Uncle Doc says you and Mommy get to decide when we have a puppy or a kitten, and when I gets to be a big sister too. Is that true?"

Used to the haphazard nature of his daughter's thoughts, Danny only took a moment to catch up with the change in subject. "It is, yes," he told her.

"So can we?"

"Can we what?"

"Have a puppy or a kitten, or can you and Mommy makes a baby?"

"Well, I don't know… what does your Mommy say?"

"She says 'we'll see'"

"Then I guess we'll see, won't we?"

"Everybody's scared of Mommy," Lucy declared with a despondent pout.

Her father chuckled. "Everybody knows what's good for them, that's why," he said. "Now, I think it's time for you to go to sleep, little missy."

"Uncle Mac's going to read me a story that Uncle Adam found for us."

"Well, just as long as it's G-rated," Danny quipped.

"It's suitable, I already checked," Mac told him.

Danny laughed. "I didn't actually think otherwise," he said. "Okay Lucy-Lu – time to say goodnight."

"You'll come in and kiss me when you get home even if I'm fast asleep?" she asked him.

"I will," he promised, "Just like I always do. I love you, pumpkin."

"I love you too, Daddy. Is Mommy gonna say goodnight too?"

"Sure, I'll put her back on."

"Night-night, sweetie," Lindsay said when Danny had handed over the phone. "You be a good girl and go straight to sleep for your Uncle Mac, alright?"

"I will, Mommy. I promise."

"Okay, I love you to the moon and back, sweetheart."

"That means a lot," Lucy informed her godfather.

Mac smiled. "I guessed it did," he said, "But it's time to hang up now, honey, okay?"

"Okay – bye Mommy, I loves you to the moon and back too."

"So let's see about this story then," Mac said once the four of them had exchanged final farewells. Setting aside his cell, he picked up the tablet that Adam had dropped off at his office a short while earlier.

The story turned out to be a tale about a lost robot who was trying to find his way home – perfectly suitable for its pre-school audience despite Danny's misgivings. As much as she was enjoying it, Lucy was nonetheless out for the count well before Mac had reached the last page. Undeterred, he read on until the bittersweet end and then stood up and lay the little girl down on the couch. Picking up a blanket from a nearby chair, he tucked the cover over her sleeping form and then bent and lightly kissed her forehead before straightening up again.

Dimming the lights and switching his cell to vibrate, he returned to his desk, drew up a chair and began to tackle the mountain of paperwork that formed a major part of his never-ending 'To do' list. As the evening wore on and the Lab grew steadily quieter, he methodically worked his way through it folder by folder, all the while silently watching over his slumbering guest and waiting for the call that would tell him that her parents were finally coming to take her home.

_**To be continued…**_

_A/N2: This chapter didn't really turn out how I'd planned. What was only meant to be the first scene – Mac going to pick up Lucy because Danny and Lindsay were caught up in the siege - ended up being the whole thing! I got totally sucked into writing a cute, fluffy 'Lucy with the team' chapter!_

_Anyway, hope you enjoyed this little interlude – we'll be back with our hero and heroine next time, I promise!_


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